The Church of Ireland is opposed to another referendum on abortion, the Bishop of Down and Dromore, Dr Harold Miller, told the committee.
Asked by Mr Jim O'Keeffe TD if the view of the church could be summed up as not being in favour of a further referendum, Dr Miller said given the history of the 1992 referendum, that would generally be the case. "The course that the Church of Ireland would generally have taken - and I am here speaking, as it were, officially rather than personally - would have been that the Constitution does not allow for the nuances that legislative reform allows for."
He said an earlier submission to the committee, by the medical ethics working group of the Role of the Church Committee, was not accepted by the General Synod in May. While it was quite normal for committees to submit documents or responses to particular issues in their area, the group with the over-arching authority was the synod.
A spectrum of views co-existed within the Church of Ireland on the issue, he said. There were areas of agreement, which included the stated position of the church that Christians rejected, in the strongest terms, the practice of induced abortion, or infanticide, as well as what he described as the violation of the personality of the mother, "save at the dictate of strict and undeniable medical necessity". This implied, he added, that there could be medical circumstances where a termination of pregnancy was required. Dr Miller said there was total agreement that abortion on demand should be opposed, but it should be permitted in "situations where the continuance of the pregnancy represents a substantial medical risk to the life of the mother, even if, in a few exceptional cases, this requires direct, rather than indirect, abortion."
He added while there were differing individual views, the church's official position remained "an essentially conservative, but not totally black-and-white one". Ms Liz McManus TD asked if it would be fair to say that there was a great comfort in the fact that "next door to us, there is a country that provides facilities and doctors to carry out safe abortions". Dr Michael Darling, a member of the delegation, said there was an "environment of hypocrisy in the South, because, first of all, 6,000 girls do not come to us at all, because they have gone to England. So that is not in our ambit, and we can either be very concerned about that or we can disregard it and say it is none of my business."
It was a double standard, he said: "We are not being honest with ourselves."
Dr Darling felt there was consensus in the Church of Ireland that while the church was antiabortion it was nevertheless, appropriate and acceptable in a few carefully selected situations. But there were also those who would like to see those exceptions extended in some ways. "I think, probably, the core opinion would be conservative, as the bishop has said. But you will find a spectrum of opinion." Dr Peter Trimble, another member of the delegation, said there was comfort in having legislation which protected the unborn baby and could back up clinical practice. "I think it also protects women. If abortion is freely available, and is seen as an easy alternative, it is not hard to envisage situations where a woman is shown practical options she may take to get everybody out of a tight situation." This could include "terminating a pregnancy where it is inconvenient for others around, or for the state to provide support in what might be difficult social circumstances."
