The Government’s abortion Bill is “cruel and corrupt” and “an affront to the fundamental equality of all human beings,” and Taoiseach Enda Kenny should be ashamed of bringing it forward, Senator Ronan Mullen has said.

Speaking yesterday during the Seanad debate on the legislation Senator Mullen said that while Mr Kenny claimed to be following the Constitution, in reality he was doing the Labour Party’s bidding.

He said: “An Taoiseach claims that in proposing this legislation his book is the Constitution. In reality, it is Labour’s way.

“It is their long standing party policy that is being legislated for, not Fine Gael’s pre-election commitment and certainly not best medical practice.”

And he added: “The Taoiseach, the Ministers and the Government should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for bringing this cruel and corrupt legislation before us.”

The Bill was fundamentally about legalising abortion, rather than providing clarity about life-saving treatments for pregnant women, he said.

He said that the title of the Bill, the Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill, was Orwellian in that it obscured its contents and “helps stifle critical and legally informed engagement”.

Senator Mullen said: “In reality it is our first ever Abortion Bill. As such it is a defeat for the human right Article 40.3.3 seeks to protect, as well as for good, evidence-based medicine. Its motivation lies not in concern for clarity or protection, but in expediency and abortion ideology.”

It was clear, given the fact that Britain had an abortion rate which was roughly three times that of own that there was an abortion culture in the West.

“We should fear to go where Britain has gone, but I fear that this legislation starts us along that road,” Senator Mullen said.

He added: “It is no argument to say that that those who might seek abortion under the suicide heading here might have gone to Britain anyway , and that those children would not have lived anyway. That is untrue.

“The law is an educator. The disparity between our abortion rates and those of Britain indicates that there are people alive today in Ireland who would not have lived had abortion been legal.”

“In the same way, we can say that children will die in the future who would not have died were it not for this law.”

Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil Senator Ned O’Sullivan accused the Catholic Church of coming close to bullying for opposing the Government’s abortion Bill.

And he accused bishops of ignoring the fact that Article 44, which recognised the special poistion of the Catholic Church, had been deleted. “Some of our eminent churchmen do not seem to have got that message yet, because they are certainly not taking any cognisance of it,’’ he said.

Mr O’Sullivan also accused bishops of making veiled threats of excommunication which were ‘’redolent of a different Ireland which we have moved on from and to which we have no intention of returning’’. He added that “this is a Republic and there are clear lines of demarcation between church and State’’.