David QuinnThe latest sitting was far from neutral, writes David Quinn
The Citizens’ Assembly, set up by the Government mostly to discuss the issue of abortion, had a very bad session last weekend. The reason it was so bad is because the 99 delegates heard plenty about the rights of pregnant women, but next to nothing about the rights of the unborn child.
This particular session of the assembly was meant to hear neutral and detached expert evidence, but because it exposed delegates almost entirely to the point of view of women facing an unwanted pregnancy, and said so little about the unborn child, it was to all intents and purposes neither neutral nor detached. The assembly must make amends if it is to have credibility.
Of particular concern, was the address by Dr Brendan O’Shea of the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP). He told delegates that the Eighth Amendment (the pro-life amendment) to our Constitution is not “satisfactory or helpful” for women facing an unplanned pregnancy.
That is not a neutral comment and the only way for the assembly to balance it was for the head of the assembly, Justice Mary Laffoy, to ensure the delegates heard from someone over the same weekend who would say that the 8th Amendment is very “satisfactory and helpful” from the point of view of the unborn child, which is a manifest fact.
Experts
We need to remember that the experts the delegates heard from last week were invited in by the assembly itself and were presented as offering an objective point of view. In the months to come, the assembly will hear from committed voices on each side of the divide. This will not balance last weekend.
Delegates will have given a particularly strong hearing to the experts invited in by the assembly and therefore it was absolutely essential that what delegates heard was properly rounded. It was not.
In his address, Dr O’Shea barely mentioned the unborn child, expect in the most passing way.
He outlined the case of a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy which, he claimed, was typical of the sort scenario GPs get to hear about.
It involved, “Sandra, who is 38 years of age, [and] attends her GP. She has three children, but recently separated from her husband three weeks previously, as he had become increasingly abusive towards her and her children. The GP has become more concerned about Sandra’s isolation and lack of supports.”
She comes in for a pregnancy test. She does not want to have a baby given her circumstances.
Note that ‘Sandra’ is healthy. There is no indication as yet that her baby is unhealthy. So this is a healthy woman seeking to abort a healthy baby.
Dr O’Hare describes the seemingly neutral way in which GPs assesses the situation of women like Sandra. She will be helped whether or not she has an abortion.
What is missing from view in his presentation is any hint of an idea that the unborn child has its own morally independent right to life which the doctor must keep in mind. It is all about the women’s choices. In other words, the perspective offered is pro-choice. The doctor offers care to the unborn baby if that is what the mother wants. The fate of the baby is entirely subject to the choice of the mother.
But our Constitution, not to mention true medical ethics, obliges doctors to do their utmost to look after both patients, that is, both the woman and her unborn child.
The assembly was duty-bound to invite in an expert who would have paid far more attention to the unborn child than Dr O’Shea, or indeed any of the other experts.
Several of the experts talked about the effects of the Human Life During Pregnancy Act, passed amid great controversy following the death in late 2012 of Savita Halappanavar.
The relevance of this to the Eighth Amendment was a bit mysterious because the Act operates in conjunction with the Eighth Amendment. The assembly is meeting to consider the Eighth Amendment, not that Act.
Another expert who addressed the assembly was Janice Donlon of the HSE. Her presentation was mainly factual but again it looked at the issue almost entirely from the point of view of women facing an unplanned pregnancy.
Big message
A big message delegates will have taken away from last weekend is that the vast majority of women who go to England for an abortion are not facing a life-threatening situation, or have a baby with a terminal condition, or face a grim threat to their own health. They are having abortions simply because it is not a good time in their lives to have a baby.
This is, of course, why the vast majority of women have abortions, but listening to the various addresses delegates will have been tempted to think the best way to address this fact is to adopt a British-style abortion law here in Ireland rather than retaining our present pro-life law, and then looking at ways to adopt a more pro-life culture that reduces demand for abortion.
Delegates did not hear in any detail how the UK abortion law operates. They did not hear, for example, that in the UK 90 percent of babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted.
It is not as though any of the experts were setting out in any way to mislead delegates, but the effect of most of the addresses was to focus the attention of delegates very much on the plight of women facing an unplanned pregnancy rather than on the life of the child in the womb.
That produced a terrible imbalance which the assembly is obliged to remedy by inviting in experts of its own to look at things from the point of view of the unborn child. Nothing less will do.