Pro-life members of Committee on Eighth Amendment to launch 'minority report' tomorrow
Three members of the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment will launch a 'minority report' tomorrow in which they present their assessment of the work and conclusions of the Committee on the Eighth Amendment.
Deputies Peter Fitzpatrick and Mattie McGrath and Senator Ronan Mullen will present their report at the gates of Leinster House at 2.15pm tomorrow.
The three members of the Committee disassociated themselves from the Committee’s pending report after a majority of members voted last week to recommend the repeal of the Eighth Amendment and the legalisation of abortion on a wide range of grounds.
"An unacceptably flawed process has led inevitably to cruel and unjust recommendations," the three members said in a statement last week.
"We think the votes reflect badly on the Committee and on those who voted to recommend stripping unborn children of legal protection. We will not associate ourselves with any report basing itself on such an unacceptably discriminatory and exclusivist view of human rights and human dignity as these votes represent."
"This Committee in no way subjected the recommendations of the Citizens Assembly to anything resembling critical scrutiny. The fact that it endorsed the vast majority of Citizens Assembly recommendations illustrates how little critical and independent thinking took place in the Committee."
"We will not be party to any report or recommendations that attempt to lend parliamentary legitimacy to the destruction of unborn human life and to interventions at odds with best medical practice in the protection of women and their unborn children, their life and their health."
