Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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It is a case of how we take it forward. Many inaccurate points were made during the course of the discussions as well. Some of them have been made repeatedly and of late. We should remind ourselves that in 1983 when the amendment was brought in, abortion was already illegal in Ireland and it was put forward as a mechanism which would stop Irish abortions but all it meant was that Irish abortions happened later, more of them were done through surgical procedures and very vulnerable and often sick women were exported from this country in what has been adjudicated as a violation of their human rights. Figures have emerged of the number of lives that have been saved on the basis that by restricting people's ability to travel, many people are alive today who would not otherwise be here. We must be very clear. Figures bandied around about comparative rates of abortion between Ireland and other jurisdictions cannot be validated because we do not know the accurate statistical figures for Irish abortion rates. What we do know, and the evidence that was given to the committee is that if one wants to reduce the abortion rates, which I would imagine all of us would like to happen, then restrictive legislation is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to support women's decision making, give access to sex education and contraception and to allow women to have sufficient economic means to care for a child who might have a disability and that they would have a home to bring a child into. All of those things are the measures that reduce abortion. The impression is being given that if we change the eighth amendment, there will be marauding gangs of women taking to the streets to claim their right to a late term abortion and that is really insulting to all citizens. We should not have had to listen to it but no doubt we will listen to a fair amount of it.

We also need to correct the idea that abortion is dangerous. Deputy Fitzpatrick reiterated the point. We were given expert medical evidence from the World Health Organization and medical practitioners that abortion is quite a safe practice. Is it the case that improper procedures have been conducted in the carrying out of some abortions, which have damaged women? I would say that is probably true, but we know it is also true that our maternity services have damaged women and babies and our solution to that is not to shut down the maternity hospitals, rather it is to regulate them properly and ensure they carry out best practice. It is the same in relation to the provision of abortion services. Introducing issues such as adoption is a red herring. Adoption is legal in Ireland. There is no impediment to any woman who wants to put a child up for adoption making that decision. Unless one is going to coerce people into making a decision, there is nothing else we can do about adoption other than provide for it as we do now. Some of those issues are a little bit complicated.

Decriminalisation is an absolute must. It came up at every single session. One of the speakers explained it really well when he said that there are many people on the committee, all over Ireland and all over the world, who have different views on abortion, when life begins and all the rest of it, but where one will get agreement is on the idea that women and doctors should not be penalised or criminalised for making such a decision. That is a key decision of this committee which I would put upfront because much of what follows after is covered by the chilling effect of that. We got a lot of evidence in that regard which I will not repeat. In that context I will refer to how we deal with module two; I know we will deal with it later.

We were asked to address how we deal with the reasons of the Citizens' Assembly. We were not asked to approve them. We were asked how we could give them life, if one likes. In that sense, looking at it point by point is not necessarily the best way to do that because we have so much evidence that said a reasons-based approach would not work and that a better way to look at all of the reasons of the Citizens' Assembly in their entirety is to say the clear majority in all of the categories was that access to abortion should be available without restriction as to reason for early pregnancy and that should be the starting point. Given that we know most abortions are carried out in early term, if we started with that point we would meet the needs of the overwhelming majority of women who need to access abortion at present. We would combine that with decriminalisation, which would make the availability of the abortion pill legal. It would certainly not be criminal anyway and would allow doctors to prescribe it. To my mind, that would be a proper solution, along with, as Deputy Jan O'Sullivan said, the National Women's Council for how one would deal with later stage terminations. We should reiterate the evidence. We spent a lot of time talking about the tragic cases of rape and fatal foetal abnormalities but they are a tiny number of the women who are accessing abortion in Ireland at the moment and in order for us to really give life to the decisions of the Citizens' Assembly, we need to start the other way around. Perhaps that is something we need to consider later.

They are the main points I wish to make. It has been a very good process. Nobody will probably have the time to go back and look at the testimony but if people out there have the time they could do a lot worse than listen to some of the people we had before the committee who were tremendous. We owe them a debt of gratitude.