Despite demands for legislation, the Government continues to stall on this emotive topic
24 July 2006
In a comment piece when the Dáil rose Miriam Lord wrote in the Irish Times July 7th that "If work is the curse of the drinking classes, then legislation is the curse of the elected classes and accountability is the curse of the governing classes." The lady is absolutely right and with an election to be held within a year no one will want to do anything in Leinster House that may offend or even annoy one single voter anywhere. It will not matter what damage this may do to society in general or certain people in particular. The worst example I can write about at the moment is the fact that the Joint Oireachtas Health and Children Committee is not about to publish even a draft report on the Report of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction, though that said Report will be a year and a half old when we come back in September.
In the early 1980s a group of people decided induced abortion should be banned in Ireland and set up a campaign to bring this about. This is fair enough; there are restrictions in many countries. It is done by legislation put forward by the governments of those countries. It was decided here, however, that it would be done by a Constitutional amendment. It is much more difficult to deal with a Constitutional amendment than with legislation if it proves to have unexpected results. But the advantage to a Constitutional referendum is that it is done by the people, not by the "elected classes", so we are not to blame.
There was put to the people a constitutional amendment so unclear in meaning that the Government then in office, led by Garrett Fitzgerald, urged the electorate to reject it. The exact wording of the amendment is "The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to protect, and, as far as practicable defend and vindicate that right."
I opposed this amendment because I did not understand what was meant by "unborn" and, despite my views on abortion being conservative, I felt the mother, the woman, had to be given a right to life greater than the "unborn". One third of the electorate voted against this amendment which was vigorously supported by Fianna Fáil, lead by the late Charles Haughey.
Fast forward twenty three years and the many problems we have had, the Courts interpreting the amendment often in a way unexpected by those who put it forward. Still no legislation on the issue, even though the Courts have said some very unkind words de temps en temps about those who are supposed to be legislating - the elected classes - and urged them to get on with the job.
While nothing was happening on this front, huge progress was being made in the field of Assisted Human Reproduction (AHR) in Ireland. Clinics were set up and many people went for treatment. In an attempt to bring some sort of regulation into the area, (as happens in most countries) I brought forward a Private Members Bill in 1999, supported by the Independent University Senators. It sought the regulation of clinics and that they should say what treatments they carried out, give results and prices and so on. The Bill was not accepted by the Government but the then Minister for Health and Children, Micheál Martin, promised he would set up a commission on the subject and did so in 2000.
Now we have the Report of the Commission and a subcommittee of the Health Committee has read it carefully and made a draft report. Any member of the main committee was welcome to join the subcommittee at any time. We recognised, as did the members of the Commission, that we could do nothing about anything to do with zygotes - not even the fertilised egg - because of the lack of clarity regarding the meaning of "unborn". (The Commission Report devoted Appendix III to explaining this issue.)
But we could do something about many recommendations of the Report. For example, national statistics should be compiled and made available to the public, longitudinal studies of children born as a result of AHR, with the consent of the families involved, should be undertaken, human cloning should be prohibited, generation and use of inter-species human embryos should be prohibited and so on. With a mind to the court case between Mr and Mrs R the importance of written consent for specific types of procedures should be sought and providers must abide by guidelines. Even guidelines for the freezing of ova and sperm could not be objected to by many.
Rarely have I been as near to despair with my parliamentary colleagues as at a public meeting of the Health Committee on 4th July when the Government parties (or was it perhaps only the Fianna Fáil members) decided we would have more consultations. (According to the recent European report on Health Matters while we scored badly in many issues we were top of the list for reports, committees and subcommittees.) These are perfectly sensible people who know what problems are arising due to lack of regulation but even excluding anything to do with the early embryo makes the subject too hot to handle. This, despite the fact that with some medical procedures involved in AHR even in the best of circumstances there is a morbidity and mortality risk to the mother. I, and others, have had heartrending letters from the mother of a young woman who died in this country while undergoing AHR.
The lack of progress must have alarmed the Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, who on July 5th sent the Chair of the Committee a letter to say she was starting to draft legislation down in the Department herself. The Minister has not mentioned legislation on AHR in her speech in the Dáil on upcoming legislation. At the meeting on the 4th July I pointed out that we were twenty years waiting for legislation to replace the present Medical Practitioners Act and that if the legislation on AHR went at that pace none of us would ever have to deal with it.
And that is how it will be - it will not happen in my time. No amount of sad, sad court cases or even the arrival on our shores of a Dr Antinori with a desire to clone the first human person will push things forward. I will have to stop exhausting myself in the Committee and try to get support for the Irish Fertility Society - the providers of AHR - and the National Infertility Support and Information Group - the patients. They are in the real world outside Leinster House and are far more likely to think independently.
Senator Mary Henry, MD
