The veteran anti-abortion campaigner, Des Hanafin, spoke in a stage whisper at the Government's press conference on the latest abortion referendum. "It's all right," he said to his companion. "Nothing new in eight or nine."
The numbers refer to questions asked and answered in the Government's information pack, first about protection for women and second about protection for "the unborn". Pregnant women will receive medical treatment that doctors consider necessary to literally save their lives, but no more.
Significantly, a woman's so-called "threat of self-destruction" arises in the question dealing not with her but with "the unborn". Mr Hanafin was right in saying there was nothing new, but wrong in saying it was all right. The assumption that people didn't grasp the issues in 1992 when they refused to exclude the risk of suicide as grounds for an abortion underscores the bill-within-a-bill that constitutes the proposed new abortion amendment and Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy schedule.
The real question whether all the debate and consultation in the meantime was a play-within-a-play designed to lull the electorate into a moral sleep where they could dream that reality would be acknowledged, at least in part. Bertie Ahern said he is excluding women's threat of suicide because it "opens the door for social abortion".
Women, apparently, are not to be believed. This assumption is part of fundamentalist anti-abortion ideology: it has extremely negative consequences for all areas of women's lives.
The overall package ignores advances in reproductive technology and scientific understanding since the first abortion amendment in 1983. It ignores the views of doctors who urged the All-Party Committee to legislate for Irish women currently obliged to give birth to babies who can't survive outside the womb.
It ignores the electorate's decision in balancing competing rights when a women becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest and does not want to continue the pregnancy. By avoiding the reality and middle-class bias of Irish abortion, it condemns Irish "unborn" to be aborted at a later gestational age than anywhere else in Europe, ignoring fundamental ethical problems and potentially serious medical consequences for women.
The proposal will not change existing medical practice. The minority of women for whom pregnancy is a deadly condition are already treated by abortion procedures in Irish hospitals, as the Masters of the major maternity hospitals have testified. Doctors are simply assured that they will not risk prosecution if their paperwork is correctly completed.
The proposal tries to control people's words and deeds, on pain of prosecution. Journalists, counsellors, doctors and campaigners, as well as parents, partners and friends, may face potential legal challenge if they are accused of aiding or abetting an abortion, or believed to be encouraging pregnant women to consider termination. Health board workers responsible for pregnant children in care may encounter difficulties in gaining permission to travel to Britain with their charges because the threat of suicide is so thoroughly excluded in the proposals. Everyone needs absolute assurances on these points.
Because referral is prohibited, Irish women having abortions in Britain who encounter complications suffer because medical information cannot be exchanged, lest criminal charges be brought. Irish doctors will be unable to establish procedures for having autopsies performed on malformed foetuses in the interests of research and to identify a particular couple's risk in subsequent pregnancy.
Apart from the serious issue of abortion, the question mark placed over women's credibility undermines their status in every walk of life, irrespective of pregnancy. Whether you are a judge, businesswoman, bus driver, civil servant, politician, IT worker, teacher, homemaker, nurse, doctor or fashion icon, your credibility is now second-rate.
This gratuitous insult may be politically expedient. More likely, it is a matter of control. The All-Party Committee heard that psychiatrists are unable to predict suicide in most cases and that other medical experts lack the expertise to do so. Evidence adduced about rates of suicide in pregnancy failed to distinguish crisis pregnancy as a specific sample, and applied normal behaviour to those cases. No evidence was taken about parasuicide, a more typical female pattern, nor about long-term depressive and self-destructive behaviour in women who gave birth against their will after rape or incest.
The Attorney General has argued he cannot find a way to consider rape a legally enforceable ground for termination. The same reasoning applies in cases of incest.
Yet every day, garda∅ and health professionals make judgments based on probability to enable them take rape and incest cases seriously. Statutory rape is already legally defined. Less frequently, but often enough to concern many, lawful judgements about mental health are made to support taking people into psychiatric care, and incarcerating them without their consent.
The State, in other words, can find formulas to support its actions when it deems them necessary. But Mr Ahern asks us to believe he cannot budge another inch. His actions of those of a gentleman, because he gave his word to have another referendum, and a gentleman's word is his bond. A woman's counts for nought.
mruane@irish-times.ie