The Green Paper on abortion, published last September, is now in the hands of the Oireachtas All-Party Committee on the Constitution, which has sought submissions on the options outlined in it. The deadline for these submissions is November 30th.
Submissions have been coming in, according to the chairman of the committee, Mr Brian Lenihan, and are being catalogued. However, the committee does not know how many have come in so far, nor is it aware from whom they have come. This will become known only when the deadline has expired, and decisions will be made only then on how to proceed.
The fact that the submissions have been restricted to the options in the Green Paper will make them more focused than those which preceded the paper.
The seven options outlined are: an absolute constitutional ban on abortion; a constitutional amendment to restrict application of the X case (which allows abortion on the grounds of threatened suicide); retention of the status quo; retention of the status quo with legislative restatement of the prohibition on abortion; legislation to regulate abortion in the circumstances outlined in the X case; a reversion to the pre-1983 position; and the introduction of a liberal abortion regime.
It is not yet clear what the committee will do when it has received and catalogued all the submissions. It may go straight to public hearings, a course which has been aired but not yet decided upon. However, this probably depends on the nature and range of the submissions received.
There were some notable absences from the list of submissions received for the Green Paper. None of the organisations representing those who might actually be asked to perform abortions made a submission.
The only medical organisations or associations which did so were the Association of General Practitioners, the Irish College of General Practitioners and the Irish Nurses' Organisation. Neither the Irish Medical Council, whose ethical guidelines on the subject were discussed in the Green Paper, the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, nor any of the three major maternity hospitals made a submission.
The authors of the Green Paper were themselves clearly concerned about this omission. They wrote: "A central consideration to any discussion of options is the position of doctors whose decision to perform an abortion could result in a decision by the Medical Council to strike them off the register."
So far, these bodies have not made submissions to the All-Party Committee on the Constitution either.
The chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Prof John Bonnar, told The Irish Times it would be discussing the matter this week, and would decide then whether to make a submission.
According to the registrar of the Irish Medical Council, Mr Brian Lea, making a submission has not been discussed at a meeting of the council. The next meeting of the council is not until December 10th, after the deadline for submissions has expired.
The Master of the National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street, Dr Declan Keane, said the hospital would not be making a submission to the committee, and he thought the other maternity hospitals would not either. "We wouldn't get a consensus view," he said. He added that he thought the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists would do so.
If the representative bodies of the doctors concerned do not make submissions before the deadline expires, it would be open to the committee to seek their views. In the light of the comment in the Green Paper, it is hard to see how the committee could produce a report without the views of those most directly concerned in the medical professions.
Dr Keane told The Irish Times that "legal, moral and ethical issues" were involved in the whole question of abortion, not just medical ones, and this is undoubtedly true. But the fact remains that the medical profession is in the eye of the storm in a way none other is. At the moment two branches of that profession are directly implicated in decisions on elective terminations of pregnancy.
The legal and constitutional position as it stands makes it illegal to perform an abortion except in circumstances where the mother's life is in danger. As the Green Paper stated, there are a number of situations described in international medical literature where elective abortions are performed to protect the life of the mother.
Such a decision is in the hands of the individual obstetrician, and there is anecdotal evidence that elective terminations are performed in Ireland in these circumstances. This practice is protected by the constitutional guarantee of the "equal right to life of the mother", and by the Medical Council's guidelines which see it as "a side-effect of standard medical practice".
However, this constitutional guarantee also led to the Supreme Court judgment allowing abort ion where, in the opinion of a psychologist or a psychiatrist, the right to life of the mother was threatened by suicide.
This latter interpretation of the mother's right to life has less widespread support than the former. One politician remarked: "Obstetricians need to be given a free hand here, but psychiatrists don't." The politicians will undoubtedly be seeking the assistance of the medical profession in solving that conundrum and translating it into legislation.
Meanwhile, although it has not been referred to the All-Party Committee in this context, the question of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic legislation has led some people to wonder if this might lead to abortion by the back door.
This is "nonsensical", according to barrister Mr Donncha O'Connell, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, who has written widely on the convention. "Most of the options outlined in the Green Paper will comply with the convention and the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights because of the large margin of divergence there is on moral questions.
"The issue of abortion has never been adjudicated on by the court, either under Article Two (guaranteeing the right to life) or Article Eight (guaranteeing the right to privacy). In the Open Door case the court refused point blank to look at the substantive issue of abortion. The Irish Constitution is the position that will prevail in Ireland."
Carol Coulter can be contacted at ccoulter@irish-times.ie