Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2024-05-29
============================================================

Stephen Donnelly (FF), Wicklow

I move amendment No. 37:
In page 61, line 12, to delete “pregnancy” and substitute “clinical pregnancy”.
This grouping of four amendments relates to the addition of a definition of "clinical pregnancy" in the context of eligibility requirements of a perspective surrogate mother. The change is proposed on foot of Committee Stage amendments from Deputies Shortall and Kenny. We had a good discussion on this and we all broadly agreed that this definition would be helpful. The definition agreed with expert advisers is that a clinical pregnancy means a pregnancy of not less than six weeks in gestation and in respect of which there is evidence of a gestational sac having been identified through an ultrasound scan. That is what the experts say. This would mean an early miscarriage would not necessarily disqualify a perspective surrogate mother from trying again to become pregnant, while maintaining the limits on the number of times a surrogate mother can participate in a surrogate agreement to protect the surrogate mother as discussed previously. I hope colleagues will see this as amendments put forward reflecting the debate on Committee Stage.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-05-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:01+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-05-29