The Master of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin has told the all-party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution that placing a constitutional ban on abortion would mean, inevitably, that somebody's life would sooner or later be put at risk. Dr Peter McKenna was giving evidence on the second day of public hearings on abortion.
He was asked by Mr Jim O'Keeffe TD (Fine Gael) whether it was his experience that in some circumstances where the life of the mother was at risk an abortion had been carried out.
Dr McKenna said: "Probably once a year a woman will be seen in this country who, if her pregnancy is not terminated, will die as a matter of complication."
He referred to a recent case involving a pregnant woman who had high blood pressure associated with heart failure and other life-threatening signs, "a most unusual condition, one that probably I will never ever see again".
The only way that the woman could be stopped from dying of heart failure was to terminate the pregnancy. Other hospitals that he knew about had "not dissimilar experiences" that needed immediate attention.
He had been flabbergasted at the interest that his views on acute cases such as this had generated in some quarters, and the reaction, as they did not necessarily represent his views on abortion in general.
"If these women did not have their pregnancies terminated, they would die. That is a medical fact, in my opinion."
It had appeared to some people that he was crusading for an "open-door termination policy". On foot of those comments, he said, he had received many anonymous letters and occasional phone calls.
If a total constitutional ban on abortion was introduced, would that not mean that the procedures he had outlined would not be permissible? Mr O'Keeffe asked.
One of the reservations he had, replied Dr McKenna, was that when the first constitutional amendment was introduced in 1983, doctors were "never seeing" cancer of the cervix in pregnancy, "and when it did come, when they were seeing it, this was called `treatment', not abortion."
The same was true of the cases he was referring to, where the pregnancy had to be terminated. "It appears that if you're acting in good faith and you're absolutely certain that the woman would die, that that is referred to as treatment."
He felt it was better to be up-front and say that the pregnancy was being aborted. "The treatment is, you end the pregnancy."
To put a constitutional ban on abortion meant that somebody's life would, sooner or later, be put at risk, he said. "If they don't leave the country, either the doctor is going to have to break the law or the woman is going to have to die."
If he felt in such circumstances that a woman was going to die, he would probably prefer to break the law and then argue the issue afterwards, he told the committee.
Dr McKenna said he was reluctant to give an opinion on the appropriate legislation to be introduced in respect of lethal foetal abnormalities. There had never been a termination in this State because of foetal abnormality.
He would feel unable to give people advice on whether or not to "travel" in such situations. Parents had to make the decision for themselves. It would be "an enormous seismic shift", he said, if the law were changed to allow termination in the case of serious handicap.
He was asked by Senator Kathleen O'Meara (Labour) whether he would make a distinction in foetal abnormality pregnancies involving life outside the uterus.
He said that only about 50 cases of abortion on Irish women were performed outside the State annually on grounds of foetal abnormality, as compared to the 5,000 plus for social reasons.