David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House. As he said, it has been a long journey. I recall the Nurse Cadden case when a woman was left to bleed to death on a back lane off Hume Street followed a botched abortion. I was one of the first, if not the first, to put abortion on an election manifesto in 1977. It certainly was not popular then. I agree with Senator Noone about language. It was appalling the way we allowed people to take over the language system and describe themselves as "pro-life" as if nobody else was pro-life. I also object to that utterly idiotic phrase, "the unborn". Does the mean that we are undead, that Dublin is un-Berlin? It is a complete nonsense and I am glad that the Minister mostly referred to the foetus in his contribution.

I agree with Senator McDowell, and I said this many weeks ago, that the outcome of this referendum is not certain by any means at all. There are a number of reasons for this. The Supreme Court clarified some of them recently but it may appear to the public to have made the foetus more vulnerable. The 12 week limit can also be used a scare tactic. People have to be brought up to speed and made aware of the existence of the abortion pill and the attendant dangers and that the Government is merely facing reality in introducing the limit.

It has been a good debate so far and there has not been any intemperate language, at least not until me. Senator Mullen representing the "No" group said they do not trust the judges, which is something I have heard previously, they do not trust the politicians and they do not trust the people. Who, in God's name, do they trust apart from themselves, of course, whom they have appointed as moral dictators in this country? In 1983, my church, led by the great Dean Victor Griffin of St. Patrick's Cathedral, said the Constitution was the wrong place for this, the Constitution was for the articulation of general principles, and the law is for the lawmakers in the properly elected Houses of the Oireachtas. That is the stance I take.

Right-wing conservatives have had a bloody nose. They lost on divorce, they lost on contraception, and they lost on gay rights. This is the last-ditch effort, the last sting of the dying wasp and, believe me, a dying wasp can have a very nasty sting indeed. The Minister should be careful. His contribution was terrific and he needs to get out there. People will not listen to the House - let us not fool ourselves - but they will listen when the Minister goes on the airwaves and on television to tell the truth to them. I think it an obscenity that the closeness to death of a woman has to be measured before she can be given an abortion. How close to death does one have to be to be granted an abortion? We know how close to death Savita Halappanavar had to be.

I have no reproductive life; I am not a reproducer. I do not have a mother anymore, nor do I have a sister, nor an aunt nor a daughter. I have damn all in the way of female relatives but I have a voice and I will use it in defence of democracy in this country. The idea that a fertilised egg is a fully human being is a total and complete nonsense.