Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I raised the recent goings on in Geneva yesterday along with Senator Keane, particularly with the UN Human Rights Committee. The committee's bias was challenged, particularly with regard to the abortion situation in Ireland. The committee claimed that abortion was a human right, which flies in the face of the very convention it is charged with upholding. The committee claims that Articles 6 and 7 are the basis for giving a right to abortion whereas Article 6 guarantees the individual's right to life and Article 7 prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The chairman, who was critical of Ireland in this regard, comes from a country where babies who happen to survive an abortion are left to die on the work tops of their sluice rooms and in some instances, they use the work tops to put the pieces of the dismembered baby back together to endeavour to see that they have all the pieces and that there is nothing left, which can obviously be a risk to a woman. I would challenge some of the pseudo-feminists on the other side of this House - I have already done so privately-----