Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentation and previous replies. For a while it felt as if they were on trial. It is an awful shame to sit on a committee like this, which should be about women and how women are affected, and have the conversation dragged away from that and off in another direction.

Many of the questions I intended to ask have been answered but I would like to tease out some of the socioeconomic reasons. As a recommendation, there is probably a lack of understanding of what that means. Initially I recall celebrating this recommendation from the Citizens' Assembly. I received commentary to the effect that it referred to poverty and wanting to abort children born into poverty. There was a real lack of understanding that this concerns women who are affected in some way by their socioeconomic circumstances and that covers many issues, including mental health, addiction and age.

It is difficult to sit here every week and separate the political from the personal, particularly as a woman who has probably experienced many of the things we speak about every week. I was a service user of the IFPA. I had a crisis pregnancy and I ticked as many boxes as a woman possibly could at the age of 15. I found the service amazing. It was comforting and the counselling I received there was very good. Deputy Rabbitte spoke about representing women with crisis pregnancies who proceeded to have children. I am one of those women and I represent them here. However, this does not mean that I am of the view that women should not have a choice. I was given that choice earlier. This is not a question of the witnesses coming in here to promote abortion, which is how it is being sold. The IFPA definitely did not sell abortion to me at the age of 15. I want to put that on the record and to commend the organisation. As a community worker who works with women in deprivation, I continued to refer women who found themselves in that situation to the IFPA and I would continue to do that, no matter what is said here today.

To tease out the socioeconomic circumstances, the witnesses have some of those reasons in the vignettes. I want to capture today not the barrier to women travelling - because we know that the socioeconomic situation is a factor - but how we begin to create criteria that encompass everything that socioeconomic status can affect. That exists in other countries. What falls under it and how? Is it impossible and should we just go for it without restriction? If we do not have a ground for socioeconomic reasons should we increase the number of weeks for providing it without restriction because sometimes those socioeconomic factors might not come to light until later?

I probably have not been very clear. It is difficult to separate the personal from the political when I sit in this room. Perhaps we can speak more to the impact of socioeconomic status on women's decisions. The witnesses referred to women's aspirations and, for example, a woman wanting to go college and being the first person in her family to do that. Will people take seriously the fact that women seeking abortion are likely to talk about their own aspirations and what they want in terms of quality of life? How do we capture that in a doctor's waiting room?