Minister for Health Simon Harris has rejected calls to ban abortion on the ground of disability, saying it would make the resulting abortion law inoperable and would stigmatise women.

An amendment was proposed by pro-life TDs including Mattie McGrath and Peadar Tóibín to prohibit abortions being sought on the grounds of race, sex or disability. Fianna Fáil TD Éamon Ó Cuív expressed concerns that advances in technology could mean that people could test for disabilities sooner in their pregnancies and long before the 12 week threshold for unrestricted abortion.

However, Mr Harris said he could not accept the amendment as it would create substantial difficulties for doctors certifying abortions. He said the proposals were “entirely unworkable” and would, in his view, “stigmatise women in crisis pregnancies by allowing its proposers to suggest that these are their motives”.

He said the only possible intention would be to render termination services “practically entirely inoperable” as it would require a doctor to be able to “determine a woman’s thoughts which she may choose to keep private, and in fact be satisfied as to the absence of those described”.