29 January 2004
Dr. Henry: I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Callely. Crisis pregnancies have been with us since the dawn of time. It is splendid that we are addressing this issue in the House as ten years ago it would not have been addressed. When I was a young doctor in the Rotunda Hospital, there was no such thing as a crisis pregnancy. We chose to ignore the issue for as long as we could, which has caused incredible distress to people. I warmly commend all those who brought forward this very useful strategy document.
I have had considerable experience of dealing with people with crisis pregnancies because I am the president of Cherish, which was a single mothers' organisation but is now a single parents' organisation. Some 30 years ago I felt brave merely trying to give support to this organisation, which is incredible because now if any right thinking person did not give it support, he or she would be considered quite dreadful. That reflects a major and welcome change in our society.
We are particularly considering this matter from the point of view of abortions and how to ensure the number of women who go England for abortions is reduced. We never had a problem with illegal abortion but we had one with infanticide, which should be remembered. All too sadly, incidents of infanticide have occurred in the recent past in cases of concealed pregnancies in particular. I am delighted the strategy document suggests we must address the situation regarding concealed pregnancies because it is also important in this context.
Abortion can never be considered a suitable method of family planning, as was said at the Cairo conference which I attended, but we must recognise that it happens. I was interested to read in the report that women who went to England had a deep conviction that it was best thing for them to do and that they made the decision quickly. One of the problems is that many women go to England without consulting anyone here. A friend of mine who worked for the Irish Family Planning Association and is sadly now dead, Dr. Anne Legge, used to tell girls who came to her looking for information in this area to go home and think about it as they would be very little more pregnant the following day. I thought it was great advice in that at least people would give themselves time and space before they made such an extremely important decision.
The Positive Options campaign appears to be very good. The cards and leaflets given out with telephone numbers on the back should encourage people, if not to contact their general practitioners who, in the main, are sympathetic in these circumstances, to contact some of the agencies such as Cherish, CURA and Life to get advice to avoid making a rushed decision. I commend, as I am sure do other Members, the way the report has been brought forward.
The report points out that a crisis pregnancy can occur in a stable marriage. A teenager may not consider pregnancy a crisis or too untoward an event in her life. We have an enormous amount to do in the field of education with teenagers. Senator O'Toole will not forgive me for mentioning teachers again, but the relationships and sex programmes in the schools must be promoted more. The popular culture regarding sexual activity which teenagers observe is not productive towards a healthy sexual lifestyle. If they were to carry on in the way suggested in some popular television programmes, the risk of catching sexually transmitted diseases would be incredibly high. Sadly, we must recognise that this area should be addressed as well as the fact that a person might become pregnant because clinics report an increase in sexually transmitted diseases. It is sad to think of girls getting chlamydia, which does not have many symptoms, and subsequently becoming infertile as a result of such infection.
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