Semantics Ricochet in the Seanad

More than a Question of eggs

It must be a grand place to work, Leinster House, plush and hallowed corridors of containment. Handy for Grafton Street, our once premier street can no longer claim that distinction, whoever allowed the proliferation of mobile phone shops and convenience stores should be sacked. But then, the custodians of our environment can't be sacked, only promoted.

The custodians of our laws, if they were rugby players would be expert at kicking to touch. Twenty years it has taken, one Supreme Court ruling, two European Court of Human Rights cases, five referenda and one dead woman we know about, to get to yesterday when the proposed legislation on the X case was reviewed by the Health Committee with leaders in the medical profession. 
I don't say Experts, as I am inclined to think the prime expert in a woman's body is herself.

I’ve never been in the Seanad chamber before, and thanks to Mary Mitchell O'Connor I was seated in the elegant barrel vaulted, neo-classical room, for six hours in what is basically a dining room chair. The committee, in fairness, sat for twelve hours with very short breaks.

Someone was going ballistic as I arrived, it turns out they'd all been having a go at the chairman, Jerry Buttimer, since Minister Reilly scarpered as soon as he introduced the bill, leaving two lieutenants to, apparently, inexpertly field questions. Own goal there by the sounds of it.

The chamber was flooded with alien sunshine from tall windows on three sides, it's a wonder there weren't more getting hot under the collar. I don't know what's happened to Peter Matthews but anyone watching will have seen him invoke the holocaust in the debate, and continues to go on about his wife, can he not just tell her himself that he values her. We don't all need to hear it repeated on TV.

Sitting beside me was Gina Menzies, who lectures in medical ethics at the College of Surgeons, then there was Nora Owen and Gemma Hussey, a great row of women. At the far side on the press gallery was Geraldine Kennedy, all women who've seen this debate rage since the 1980's. So glad I wasn't sitting beside the old man who roared 'Rubbish' when Peter Boylan spoke of the case where a woman died needlessly in Galway.

I took an awful lot of notes, just in case any inspiring nuggets were mined, but much of what we heard was repetitious and cautious. Even Senator Bacik who first came to notice as a student campaigning for women’s reproductive rights, was restrained. Some senators and deputies asked considered and intelligent questions, others could have got their answers in a good dictionary. It seemed to me the message was to stay on-message. There was a lot of semantic ricochets.

The afternoon session was given over to two maternity hospital masters and a former master, the deliverers of babies and caretakers of expectant mothers, pretty much expert in their vocation and one in particular an outstanding expert in actual pregnancy and labour, having produced four children. It was the master of the Coombe that had least favour with the Heads of Bill but it was difficult to assess his concern as his figures were calibrated on the 5000 women who travel to the UK annually, rather than the low figures of women who's lives are at risk each year in Ireland.

In the twelve hours of debate that took place yesterday, one question hushed the room.

'Can anybody here say for certain that X would not have committed suicide?'

Silence.

'I can't', said Rhona Mahony.

The legislation ignores the tragedy of wanted babies with lethal abnormalities, but when we want to be, we are a very cautious country, if only the Government had exercised such caution and restraint in the Noughties, we wouldn't have the catastrophic increase in adult suicide. 

So much for the Protection of Life during Hard Times.