Yes, I will withdraw. I will say that it must be accepted that the implacable attitude of the Opposition who refused point blank to give an explanation, to qualify, to outline the implications of the wording they are attempting to bring before the Irish people in a referendum has brought me, a normally mild-mannered person, to a pitch that I must state that integrity in political life is not merely about integrity in sexual matters, it is about integrity right across the board. It is moral to care about what is right and proper in a referendum. It is moral to have integrity. It is moral to put country before party and that is what should be done in this case but is not being done in this House or, indeed, anywhere else. That is what I resent, and bitterly and deeply resent. I am looking for explanations from that side of the House. I am waiting for clarification. I am waiting for an in-depth detailed analysis of the wording and I am not getting it. This is what has brought me to this pitch. It is not my normal form. I am normally courteous and civilised and I make my points of an intellectual nature but I cannot do it in this case. The Opposition are absolutely frustrating the intellectual questioning of this side of the House. As Senator Brendan Ryan said he will wait until doomsday to get the answers.
I cannot believe it is possible for all Senators on that side of the House to be of one mind on this issue. It is just not possible for people to be of one mind on any issue. I see no subtleties, no variation, no explanation and no thought. The most that has come out of this debate is that it is so because I say it is, therefore it is. That is the most crazy type of logic. It is illogical. That is why on this side of the House we will insist on questioning, asking and trying to see if the Opposition will be honest and face up to the implications of this wording and what they mean for mothers, children and for this society. This debate has caused a great waste of parliamentary time in the opinion of many people but because the consequences are so far reaching and because it is possible it will bring about very dangerous situations and threaten the lives of mothers and children it is not a waste of parliamentary time although I accept we could be getting on with more practical legislation. It has caused divisions right down through the very fabric of society, in the legal profession, in the medical profession and in the Churches. Those divisions may not even be healed in this generation and I would not like to have that on my conscience and I do not see how the collective ranks, with their collective conscience, can have this on their conscience.
The wording before us sees the cultivation of vagueness as a virtue. I do not propose to delay the House unduly with lengthy discussions on the word "unborn" and its ramifications, though it did intrigue me to hear a suggestion made by Senator O'Donoghue yesterday that it would please him if it was qualified by the word "child". It would be very nice if this could be done and it would add yet another innocent, sweet sounding word into this anodyne amendment. Unfortunately, it avoids the issues of fertilisation, implantation and viability which have been so carefully and painstakingly developed by this side of the House. It skirts the issue, evades the issue and is symptomatic of all the Opposition have offered us in this debate. This term "unborn" has no meaning in law or in medical science that I know of. It is not qualified. Therein lies its intrinsic danger. It does not even refer to the unborn human, a point which Senator O'Donoghue was attempting to make. It could be, if taken to its logical conclusion, that we may not even be allowed to eat eggs any more.
Leading pro-amendment obstetricians in various statements to the newspapers and at meetings have prejudged the legal interpretations of the amendment. The master of one maternity hospital in Dublin wrote to the papers stating that the amendment will not change current practice in his hospital, all of which is very soothing and very uplifting. Current practice presumably includes termination of pregnancy when ectopia or carcinoma of the uterus exist. This brings to mind a quotation from Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll which is as follows:
When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.
It is perhaps appropriate to quote an egg in this context but it might be wise to bear in mind what actually happened to Humpty Dumpty at the end of the day. Perhaps the pro-amendment people will be particularly gratified to hear the weighty opinion of an egg being accorded significance in this debate.
I regret that the Minister is not here although I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Social Welfare to the House. There are a number of points on which I would like the Minister to comment. Does he consider that legislators in a democracy have a responsibility towards the public to ensure that in a referendum the issue should be presented to the public in a clear and unambiguous way? If, as I feel sure, he will respond affirmatively to this does he consider that this Fianna Fáil wording meets those requirements? If, as I expect he will, he answers in the negative, may I ask him if he would countenance the possibility of a citizen bringing an action against the Oireachtas for putting him, the citizen, in a position of voting on an issue in a referendum which he does not understand? This has never happened before; it has never been necessary. Previous referenda have been crystal clear. Granted the implications of joining the Common Market may not have been immediately apparent to the citizens who partook in that referendum but it was a clear-cut choice which was presented to them, "Do you or do you not wish this country to join the EEC?" No such clear-cut choice is being presented to the public in this amendment to the Constitution. If I were to pick any word which reigns in the minds of the public on this amendment it would be the word "confusion". The legislators are doing themselves and the public a disservice by placing before them in a referendum wording which is manifestly ambiguous, which the legislators in this House fail to comprehend and which the public have not an earthly chance of comprehending. I cannot see who is going to make this wording clear to them. I know, and everybody in this House who is honest and who is facing up to the reality of the situation knows, that the public will be lead to believe that they are voting for or against abortion. They will happily go out in their thousands to do just that when that is not what this amendment is about.
I will now turn to the other conundrum inherent in the wording and that is, with due regard to the life of the mother. As matters stand the equal right does not lie with the foetus, in practice. In our hospitals every day our obstetricians make decisions involving the premature delivery of infants. This is done out of due regard for the health of the mother. There is no legal framework within which those decisions are made. Many obstetricians stated that they do not expect the amendment to interfere with current obstetric practice. Their decisions are made primarily in the best interests of the mother and, as far as practicable, in the best interests of the neonate. The result is frequenly that the tiny neonate comes out of this second best. This happens despite the very best efforts of the team involved, obstetricians, neonatologists and paediatricians. In the main these decisions are wise and considered and ones with which no sensible person could quibble. The amendment purports to give rights to the neonate but it cannot ensure that these rights will actually obtain so long as current medical practice in this field continues.
Would the Minister care to outline how these equal rights of mother and child would be implemented? He will, of course, realise that decisions of this nature made by obstetricians, without the framework of the law, have to be made expeditiously. There is very often an extremely dramatic situation. These decisions are made hastily and instinctively with the skill, training and expertise of the obstetrician and his caring brought to bear on what is very often a matter of split-second timing. He is the arbiter in this situation. Nobody has made him the arbiter and it is a decision which, we, the Irish people, are happy to see an obstetrician have because in him we recognise skill, training and expertise. Should this amendment become part of our Constitution who is going to arbitrate in these situations? Will there be annexed to every maternity unit here a representative of Government to act as arbitrator in such situations? This may sound very far-fetched but it is the logical interpretation of this wording, which is shrouded in mystery. We look to the Opposition to bring some clarity to bear, but so far in this debate they have failed lamentably and have come with their humpty dumpty obiter dictum: "It is because I say it is". That is not good enough. It is not good enough for the legislators and the Irish public.
A very interesting situation will arise should the Supreme Court have to interpret this matter and it will have to interpret it as sure as night follows day, because it is crying out for interpretation so vague is it. If the Supreme Court decides to interpret that citizenship commences from the moment of fertilisation all kinds of very interesting possibilities and ramifications will follow. The fertilised ovum will also have to be accorded the rights all citizens have.
One sees the Minister of State at the Department of Health and at the Department of Social Welfare having enormous problems computing the children's allowance which will have to accrue to those fertilised ova. It is not far fetched.
It is logical, if one determines that citizenship will attach to fertilised ova, that all the rights of citizenship which we enjoy must attach themselves to the tiny embryo. We are talking about the right to children's allowances that I alluded to. We are also talking about death certification in the event of still-birth or abortion. We are talking of funeral grants for the burials of the aborted products of conception. Perhaps while I am on the subject the Minister could tell me whether there is a still-birth register in this country.
We are witnessing in this House the final stages of an ill-begotten, ill-conceived proposal. Would that it could have been still-born. The proposed wording represents a further assault on women by a predominantly male Legislature who are legislating for circumstances in which they will never, ever find themselves. Existing methods of contraception may be outlawed because it is inevitable that the hawkish elements in SPUC and PLAC will not stop at this but will proceed to take constitutional actions against existing methods. This has been the case with the organisation LIFE in England and unfortunately we are an imitative society. I am very confident that those people, with their taste of victory, will rampage on to attack more legislation which we have. I would say in passing that we do not have much in the way of contraceptive counselling in our maternity hospitals, certainly in two out of three, except, of course, in regard to the method approved of by one Church. Such moves by organisations which have pressed for this amendment will be resisted with far more vigour than is being presented in the attempts to pass this amendment.
Even at this eleventh hour I would appeal to and implore political leaders, Church leaders and leaders in the professions to come together recognising that we hold so much in common and that this worthless amendment jeopardises all that we hold in common.
We are shortly to witness something of an historic step forward, namely the establishment of the All-Ireland Forum. I listened very carefully to the Northern voices which spoke in this debate. Not one of them felt that this amendment had any merit or any applicability to an all-Ireland which we devoutly espouse. Because of that and because a gesture of goodwill towards the forum is called for and is warranted, I call for a stop to this dreadful amendment which has divided and upset the citizens of this State so much.
I would like to refer to comments of Senator Honan when she spoke, dissociating herself and her party from the scurrilous and vicious letters which were received, in the main in this House by women Senators. I would like to thank her for that. Never in my wildest dreams have I associated her or any members of her party with such vicious, lowdown, nasty emanations. It is interesting to note in passing that since the lady Senators in this House took their courage in their hands and stood up to this nastiness and viciousness, those people have become silent. It certainly points out that the way to deal with ugliness, viciousness and nastiness is not to cower before it, not to be timorous — to stand up and point at it, and that will make it go away. If anything good has come out of this amendment that has.
I have concluded all that I want to say. I will repeat that I see in the wording both in relation to "unborn" and "with due regard to the life of the mother" anomalies and mysteries which are still shrouded. I look to the Opposition to shed light on these difficulties. I challenge them, since they stand over this wording, that it is their right, duty and their moral obligation to spell out for us in detail the meaning of these words. Until they do so there will be a large measure of dissatisfaction with this amendment, and this will be translated in the votes against it outside this House if and when it sees the light of day.
Those of us who have failed to obtain satisfaction to our questioning happily and with confidence can go to the public and say, "This thing is a nonsense". It had a failed Committee Stage in another House where the debate degenerated into an unseemly debacle, which was referred to by the Minister of State with responsibility for women's affairs when she spoke here at the last Seanad meeting. It has failed in its Committee Stage in this House because we did not get replies to the questions which we so urgently sought answers to. It is a mystery, and when in doubt the best thing to do is to vote against it.
