Harris praises Boylan’s anti-Eighth Amendment stance
SIMON Harris has voiced his support for repealing the Eighth Amendment, saying he ‘attaches a great deal of weight’ to evidence from medics such as Peter Boylan to the Oireachtas committee.
The Health Minister yesterday praised the contribution of Dr Boylan to the committee, describing the testimony of the former master of Holles Street Hospital as ‘powerful’.
Dr Boylan, chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, said on Wednesday that the Eighth Amendment had caused great harm in women.
‘I suggest that the Eighth Amendment is unworkable. When it was enacted 34 years ago, neither the world wide web nor the abortion pill had been invented,’ Dr Boylan said.
Health Minister Mr Harris referenced the death of Savita Halappanavar, a ‘terrible tragedy’, which Dr Boylan had ‘so eloquently reminded us of ’ at Wednesday’s sitting of the committee.
Ms Halappanavar died after being denied a termination while suffering a septic miscarriage at University Hospital Galway in October 2017.
On Wednesday, Dr Boylan said Ms Halappanavar would have lived if she had been granted access to a termination.
Addressing the Oireachtas committee on the future of the Eighth Amendment, he said: ‘If she had had her termination when she asked for it, there would have been no question of her developing sepsis.’
‘We would have never heard of her, and she would be alive today.’
In relation to access to abortion in the event of rape, Dr Boylan told the committee it could be ‘dealt with in a straightforward way by legislating for the legal prescription of the abortion pill’.
Mr Harris said yesterday: ‘I attach a great deal of weight to any medical advice given at an Oireachtas committee particularly when I’m not a clinician and most of my colleagues in the Oireachtas aren’t clinicians either.’
Commenting on his personal view on the Eighth Amendment, which grants equal rights to the mother and the foetus, Minister Harris said: ‘My personal view… is that the Eighth Amendment is not working in this country and that the Eighth Amendment should be repealed.’
He said the committee’s decision on Wednesday not to retain the Eighth Amendment in full provides him with ‘a greater deal of clarity’ on the shape of next summer’s referendum.