Politicians keeping promises should not be so rare an event as to provoke praise. Nonetheless, it is admirable that Fine Gael TDs Emer Currie and Barry Ward have delivered on their promise to Saoirse Aylward to draft Jax’s Law by the end of March.

The draft Bill supported by 32 cross-party Oireachtas members categorises the loss of a pregnancy due to careless or dangerous driving as a serious offence that must be dealt with in the Circuit Court.

The Bill is named for baby Jax, who died in Saoirse Aylward’s womb after a road traffic collision. To Aylward’s horror, under current law, her 4lb baby boy, who had to undergo an invasive postmortem to establish the cause of death and who has a stillbirth certificate and a grave, could not be considered a victim of crime.

Drafting a Bill is only the first step. Getting it enacted will be challenging. Things are not as bad as when Alan Shatter discovered in 2008 that out of 87 proposed Private Members’ Bills in the previous four years, only one had been enacted – Pat Rabbitte’s Bill allowing coroners to subpoena witnesses. Nonetheless, the reality remains that Private Members’ Bills, even sponsored by backbenchers, are often left to languish in second stage hell. The best hope is that it influences subsequent government legislation.

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Although most people can see the common-sense need to recognise babies who were killed in their mothers’ wombs, some would like to see this Bill fail.

Some object that it does not go far enough. The Bill uses the term “lost pregnancies” rather than the death of a baby before birth. It explicitly rules out conferring personhood on a baby in the womb, and is confined to babies who meet the criteria for stillbirth registration, of at least 23 weeks’ gestation and weighing 400g. It only addresses road traffic deaths, thus excluding babies lost through other violent crime.

Others with a pro-life perspective have philosophical and ethical objections. They believe the electorate voted overwhelmingly to remove all protection for babies in the womb when the Eighth Amendment was repealed. To them, it is incoherent and unacceptable to extend protection to one subsection of babies before birth while legally ending the lives of others. While sympathising with parents whose babies have died due to criminal acts, such objectors believe society should have to live with the consequences of voting for abortion.

In contrast, some pro-choice advocates view any recognition of babies before birth as potentially undermining abortion rights.

Those who believe the legislation does not go far enough are correct. It still provides more recognition than currently exists, an argument that also applies to those who consider it philosophically incoherent.

The Road Traffic Act dates from 1961 and was never amended to reflect the 1983 protection of humans before birth, a legislative oversight that is deeply regrettable. Repealing the Eighth Amendment makes recognising these children much more difficult, as it would have provided grounds for amending the Road Traffic Act and other legislation. Even so, we should do what little we can.

As for pro-choice objections, all choice was taken away from their families. This Bill represents an opportunity to transcend ideological divisions to support grieving families.

There is a further important aspect to Jax’s Law, concerning the Minister directing the Road Safety Authority to include these deaths in road traffic statistics.

Susan Gray of Parc Road Safety Group has campaigned for this for years, taking up the mantle of the late David Walsh and his son-in-law, Pat Enright. Mary Enright, Pat’s wife and David Walsh’s daughter, was 34 weeks pregnant with baby Mollie when both were killed in a collision in 2012.

It took four years to obtain a death certificate for baby Mollie and to get her death included in Road Safety Authority statistics for that year. But this is not standard practice.

Aylward also found it impossible to get a straight answer from the RSA as to whether baby Jax is included in the 2024 figures. She was referred to An Garda Síochána in Wexford, whom she found exceptionally supportive and helpful. Jax was included in the provisional figures compiled by Wexford gardaí, which are used as a basis for RSA statistics, so why could the RSA not confirm his inclusion?

It is unclear whether other Garda divisions record deaths of babies in the womb.

Since at least 2016, when the Enright case happened, the RSA must have been aware of the emotional toll suffered by families bereaved in this way. These statistics, which are gathered primarily to improve policymaking, are incomplete unless they include all who died. A body like the RSA should be advocating for the inclusion of the deaths of babies in the womb instead of directing families back to An Garda Síochána.

It should not be left to grieving families to campaign for their babies to be included in road death statistics.

© The Irish Times