The definition of abortion is crucial to the efforts of the all-party Oireachtas committee, when it comes to make its recommendations, Dr Alistair McFar lane, a retired obstetrician and gynaecologist, told the hearing.
No definition appeared in the Green Paper, he said, and the committee had heard a number of accounts from the various medical experts in the past week which differed as to whether or not the ending of pregnancy in certain procedures (carried out by all obstetricians on medical grounds) amounted to abortion.
Prof Walter Prendiville had told the committee earlier the classic definition of abortion in the textbooks was the ending of a pregnancy before viability, either spontaneous or induced, the chairman, Mr Brian Lenihan, said. The classic definition focused on the ending of pregnancy, regardless of whether a doctor was treating a condition in the mother or not.
Prof Prendiville had also said that recent developments in medical literature tended to use the term "miscarriage", where a pregnancy aborted spontaneously and to reserve the word "abortion" in cases of termination.
Dr McFarlane said he did not care for the word "termination", which in the United Kingdom was a euphemism for abortion. "I prefer to avoid it for that reason." He preferred the term, "ending the pregnancy", which was "very neutral".
Words had uses, not meanings, said Dr McFarlane. Words were powerful and were used differently by both the pro-life and pro-choice lobbies. The pro-life people talked about the baby or the little human being, while the pro-choice side referred to the pre-embryo, embryo and foetus.
The definition of abortion he preferred on grounds of clarity was "the deliberate ending of the life of a little human being by whatever means, the action having been taken before birth and where he or she could have survived with recognised ante-natal care."
This definition would exclude cases, he said, where the embryo or foetus was already dead and cases where the baby was doomed and could not be saved. "One would have to be careful not to leave a legal loophole."
There were certain examples where normal medical practice did result in the death of the embryo or foetus, "but these were already doomed, and one should not call these abortions".
The pro-choice movement wanted such cases to be called abortions, said Dr McFarlane, "because they wish to be able to say that abortion can be a medical necessity".
If that argument was accepted, there was still a need for "a word for abortion as I have defined it". Some neutral term could be used, he suggested, to cover these cases, for example "ending the pregnancy when embryo/foetal viability is not possible".
That should be safe, he said. A minority of doctors, he added, were determined to get "abortion on demand" introduced.
"Thus to specify that abortion be allowed if severe hypertension is endangering the mother's life is all they would need to do an abortion when the blood pressure is raised [as it often is]. The gardai would be wasting their time if they took a test case, as it is certain that it could not be proved that an abortion had been done."
He proposed that the word "abortion" be adopted by the committee as he had defined it, "otherwise all sides will use the word differently and confusion will reign in the months to come."