Deirdre Conroy: Time is ripe to repeal the Eighth Amendment
NEVER before has Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald given me heart palpitations. But last week, at the annual Women For Election event in the Royal Irish Academy, she told the audience how glad she was that the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution had voted that afternoon to recommend a referendum on repeal simpliciter.
It took a moment for me to take it in. It was the first time I have ever heard a joint Oireachtas statement, so clear and positive on the matter of a woman’s right to choose.
In response, Professor Mary Higgins, consultant obstetrician at the National Maternity Hospital, told the panel that her most heart-breaking duty is sitting opposite a pregnant woman and explaining the fatal foetal abnormality.
It pains her to see a woman’s shocked expression and then the horror that the hospital can do nothing for them.
The diagnosis is often not available until 17 weeks. A woman’s only choice is to leave the country or carry for 40 weeks an unborn that will die at birth. Carrying to full term is not a simple matter of nine months’ gestation, it is watching your body grow huge and your hormones dramatically alter, knowing you have a burial after labour.
It reminded me of watching my obstetrician’s face, giving me the bad news and then the truly awful news about ‘our jurisdiction’. My palpitations accelerated, as I sat in the 18th-century library on Dawson Street filled from floor to ceiling with ancient tomes on Irish history, as a page was at last turning in the narrative of Irish women and their private health.
I looked around and saw women of all ages, taking in the reality of the obstetrician and her patients. It was in stark contrast to the isolation of 2002 when my letter about Ireland’s laws against choice was published and became national news weeks before the ambiguously worded referendum in 2002.
I concealed my name for years, as my case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights. I had a very good business in 2002, with major clients, but my personal circumstances were nobody’s business but mine, my family’s, and my doctor’s.
The trauma of the national divide on termination, the secrecy imposed, the fear of being treated like a criminal, forced me to change my working life, to return to university and work with stone, or anything inanimate. I can’t imagine how worse it would have been with social media and the virulent attacks women receive today.
Secrecy has many side-effects, the bereavement process is disrupted and the grief is far worse because Ireland’s ban on choice has taken its toll on you.
Fifteen years later, based on the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly, the Oireachtas Committee published its report this week. It was chaired by solicitor and senator Catherine Noone, who took a professional and even-handed position during very aggressive debates.
The report clearly sets out matters that are agreed with the Citizens’ Assembly, for instance no gestational limit on fatal foetal abnormality; and other matters where the Committee disagrees, as in socio-economic reasons for termination up to 22 weeks. In that regard, the Committee is clear on recommending a time limit up to 12 weeks. From the extensive expert medical evidence given, the availability of abortion pills through the post is one crucial change since 1983.
AS Dr Peter Boylan says, the ‘genie is out of the bottle’. There is no knowing what repercussions this will have on a woman’s body and there is no control on how this medication is taken. It is a very good reason for providing safe medical support.
In its October meeting, the Joint Committee decided that Article 40.3.3 should not be retained in full, being an acknowledgement (in their words) that the current regime for the termination of pregnancy in Ireland is unfit for purpose and that constitutional reform is necessary.
That being the case, and the polarised debate being well and truly documented for decades in print and on air, it is time to address the need for a less divisive manner in which this country can facilitate women’s health. It is not a time to initiate another war on women. It is an opportunity to acknowledge that medical practitioners should be allowed to provide proper care for their patients, and not dismiss them.
The report states that, “the Committee is of the view that the health care pathway for a woman who decides to terminate a much-wanted pregnancy, having received the devastating diagnosis of a fatal foetal abnormality, should be the same as the health care pathway provided to a woman who decides not to terminate her pregnancy”. This is a clear example of how one woman’s choice to terminate does not diminish another woman’s choice to continue, which is an argument often used against repeal. After the report was launched, a committee member, Deputy Mattie McGrath, suggested that the HSE should banish the medical term ‘fatal foetal abnormality’ as he thinks it is crude.
Mr McGrath is not an obstetrician who has to sit opposite a pregnant woman and tell her that the unborn in her womb will not survive.
The term ‘chromosomal anomaly incompatible with life’ is another that was used to describe my pregnancy; no doubt he would find that crude too. An amendment to the Constitution, worded by old men in 1983, continues to impact detrimentally on young women today; the time is ripe for repeal.
Medical practitioners should be allowed to provide proper care for their patients, and not dismiss them