Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish everyone a very happy International Women's Day. We often talk in this Parliament about the provision of abortion services for women. Some like to think that this is a country where we do not have abortion. Of course we do. Women have abortions every day of the week. They mostly travel to England to do so because they cannot avail of services here. We would be foolish to suggest that we have somehow created a little statelet where abortion is not a reality. It is. Women have abortions every day of the week. The only difference between here and a country where a woman can avail of a full suite of services is that she has to travel.

The UN found that the State had failed to protect one of our citizens, a woman by the name of Amanda Mellet, from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. It is a fairly damning indictment of the State, of our health care system and the choices and the options that are available to women, that we could say that our State has failed women to that extent in the very recent past. I would be interested to hear Professor Pras' views on that. Women have abortions, as we said. We know that this happens. They are our sisters, our friends, our aunts and our mothers. We know that it happens.

We have an issue with follow-up care for women. I wonder if Professor Pras might comment on the necessity for women to be able to avail of a full suite of services, including follow-up care where a termination has taken place. We can talk a lot about how we have failed women - and we continue to fail them - but are there examples of best practice?

Professor Pras's presentation refers to universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services, and the need for states to act as champions in the promotion of mental health policies and services. Are there countries that do it better than we do, from which we could learn in order to become the champions, as Professor Pras advocates and as we would all like to be?

It is very timely to get an international perspective on the extent to which the church, specifically the Roman Catholic Church in the case of this country, exerts an influence over the choices available to women.