Ms Maeve Taylor:

I would signal one particular change, which is the mandatory waiting period.

My colleague, Dr. Henchion, can talk about its impact on service users. The waiting period is not related to women's health, yet doctors are forced to require women to wait for three days regardless of their circumstances. Most women have made their decision, present to their doctors clearly about the decision they have made and have assessed their circumstances. The WHO's guideline is clear that mandatory waiting periods demean women and are unrelated to health.

A wider point that we would make about the law is that, since it is based on a criminal statute, it has a tendency towards disapproval of abortion care. There is an exception under sections 9 to 12, inclusive. This weighs heavily on providers and is not something that is present in consultations with patients in other cases. We believe that a significant improvement to the Act could be a set of overarching guiding principles that establish that access is based on human rights principles of reproductive health, centring the Act around access rather than it being built out from a criminal provision.