Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Where was that voice and conscience when the rights of born children were being decimated by the cuts in child benefit, by the cuts in social welfare payments to youngsters with a disability and the cuts in education? It was nowhere to be heard.

Their obstructing of this legislation is being presented as a battle to protect the unborn, a battle to stop Irish abortion. The reality is that Irish abortion is pretty much the same as every other country's abortion. It is merely that it is exported out of here. Of course, this Bill will not change that, and never was to. What it should have done was to ensure that a woman who needed an abortion to save her life, not her health or well-being, could get access to that abortion here at home. It should have met the wishes of the majority of Irish people who voted in two referenda that this right should include where that risk came from suicide. Instead, despite the Taoiseach's denials last week that distraught suicidal women would not be dragged before tribunals, there is the spectre of a woman having to present her case to three doctors-----

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