Politicians make hocus pocus out of science
Terms such as “self-destruction” were thrown about, evoking images of a suicide bomber pressing a button rather than pregnant women in the throes of life-threatening despair. There was a reference to a “panel for the assessment of self-destruction”, which sounds like something out of a totalitarian state.
One politician asked whether the maternity services in this country had the capacity to deal with a bill that basically enshrines in law the medical practice that has prevailed for more than two decades. The question implied hundreds, if not thousands, of women will storm maternity hospitals, demanding abortions, when the bill passes into law.
Some TDs expressed the opinion that psychiatry was basically a subjective practice, rather than a clinical science, leading to the Department of Health’s Tony Holohan pointing out that psychiatry is not “hocus pocus”.
There was plenty of hocus pocus flying around among some of the politicians who contributed to yesterday’s Oireachtas health committee hearing into the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013. There were also valid concerns, helpful suggestions, and interesting points of view. But overhanging the whole proceeding was the position of a cohort of politicians, at least a dozen strong, who can’t get their heads around the imperative that the bill is about saving women’s lives. For this dozen, the inclusion of a provision on the threat of suicide as a grounds for an abortion is about shifting culture, rather than saving lives.
Fine Gael TD Peter Mathews wanted to put the brake on proceedings. The forthcoming legislation, he said, “is far too important [an issue] — the consequences for Ireland, its people, its mothers, its daughters — to be racing into this”.
The legislation is in response to a Supreme Court decision dating from 1992. Who’s rushing? As for the people of Ireland, its mothers, and daughters, all the indications are that the vast majority of these citizens live in the real world, where unfortunate and tragic circumstances need to be addressed, and women’s lives valued.
Independent senator Rónán Mullen said the legislation was “bringing abortion to Ireland”, while another Fine Gael TD, Terence Flanagan, decried a “cultural change”. The reality is that abortion is an unfortunate reality in Ireland for decades, with an average of 5,000 women resorting to it yearly by crossing the Irish Sea.
At the outset yesterday, committee chairman Jerry Buttimer appealed for the same calmness and respect that informed the committee’s previous hearings on the matter in January. He should be so lucky. Those opposed to the bill repeatedly intervened, heckled, and challenged the contributions of the witnesses in a manner that was devoid of any respect.
“I’m asking for a truthful response,” senator Paul Bradford at one stage told Dr Holohan, implying that theretofore he hadn’t been getting just that.
If anything, the lack of decorum smacked of desperation. The bill looks like it is going to become law, and those who oppose it feel power draining from their cause. The politicians who object want things to stay as they are, beyond the reach of the law, a strange position for lawmakers.
Having lost the argument to legislate at all, the whole focus is now on the suicide clause. “We’re back again and again and again to this thing of suicide. It’s extremely rare. There cannot be compelling evidence when the numbers are so very tiny,” Rhona Mahony, master of the National Maternity Hospital, told the hearing yesterday, after she was asked about it for the umpteenth time.
She and her fellow obstetricians Peter Boylan and Sam Coulter Smith must have been blue in the face from repeating that they were not psychiatrists.
Where medical professionals see an extremely rare case, the objectors see a gap through which floods of women will flock to have abortions on Irish soil.
Repeatedly yesterday, objectors suggested there was “no evidence that abortion is a treatment for suicide”. Dr Holohan upbraided them for continually suggesting that such a conclusion was the outcome of the committee’s previous hearings in January.
With the preponderance of questions concerned with suicide ideation, and whether to take it seriously, Dr Mahony felt compelled to point out the obvious. “Yes. When somebody plans to take their own life they are at risk of dying... I have no wish to kill babies, but I understand that if a woman in my care dies, she [the unborn] will too.”
Dr Mahony laid it out in terms of X, the 14-year-old whose plight 20 years ago brought the issue to the Supreme Court, and finally now the legislature. “If you want to remove suicide [as a grounds for an abortion], is everyone in this room absolutely certain that there is no way that X would kill herself? Can we all say ‘I am absolutely certain that she will not kill herself’? I can’t.”
But while Dr Mahony and her colleague Dr Boylan had no problem with the proposed legislation, Dr Coulter Smith said the suicide provision would create an “ethical dilemma” for doctors.
For others in Leinster House, the hearings are a time to keep the head down. James Reilly, the health minister, left immediately after his opening remarks, a swift departure that met with condemnation from many of those who wanted to direct their ire at him. Fianna Fáil, which had signalled that its parliamentary party would follow progress of the bill carefully, was very under-represented in the chamber. At one stage, there wasn’t a single member of the parliamentary party in attendance.
The sparks are really set to fly on Monday when members of the psychiatry profession come before the committee. Then the clinical science will get sorted out from the hocus pocus.
