This week it was reported that a bill is being proposed to amend road traffic legislation, so that if a pregnant mother is injured and it results in the death of her baby, the person responsible can be charged in court. In principle, changes to the law moving in this direction are welcome. 

However, what the reported bill covers is very limited. It’s notable as well that the way the bill is phrased fails to recognise the intrinsic value of an unborn baby’s life – indeed it seems more so intended to set aside that concept.   

Firstly, it only relates to road traffic accident scenarios – this bill changes nothing in situations where babies die before birth as a result of an assault on their mothers. Secondly, it is only about unborn children at later stages in pregnancy – at least 23 weeks, or where an unborn child weighs 400g or more. 

Saoirse Aylward was 31 weeks pregnant with her baby son Jax when he was tragically killed in a car crash in 2024. After finding out that her son’s death was not recognised as an offence under current Irish law, Ms Aylward has called for change and speaking at Leinster House, she welcomed the proposed law. “Jax was a four-pound baby, I had to have a post-mortem [examination]. I had to bury him and my 11-year-old daughter visits him at a graveside, but yet the law says that he doesn’t exist,” Ms Aylward said.

However, the TD sponsoring the bill, Barry Ward from Dún Laoghaire, referred to the death of the baby in such cases as “loss of pregnancy”. The Fine Gael TD commented: “This will change the law so that if there is death or serious injury, it can be prosecuted on indictment and this will add the loss of pregnancy to that.”

The Pro Life Campaign understands that Ward’s bill repeatedly uses similar language about “loss of a pregnancy” and even contains an explicit statement that the bill should not be interpreted to confer personhood on any unborn child. It appears that those drafting the bill set out to create legal penalties for the impact on mothers bereaved by the loss of their baby, while actively seeking to avoid recognising the humanity of the unborn child. 

Their approach is disappointing but not surprising, considering that Ward was among the TDs who voted last December to move a Dáil bill forward which would have effectively decriminalised abortion up to birth. That would have led to deliberate “loss of pregnancy” being even more widely legally available than it already is – and yet he wants drivers who accidentally cause the same loss to be criminalised. The double standards are beyond obvious. 

It’s certainly a problem that current laws fail to recognise the death of an unborn baby through an accident or assault, and it should be addressed. But as for how to go about it, there’s a lot of room for improvement beyond this very narrowly limited approach.