Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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I will not because I am just catching up on the debate as I had to be elsewhere this morning. I was struck by a couple of things. Looking at the whole journey we made over the course of the eighth amendment committee hearings, one thing that was consistent throughout every session was the issue of criminalisation and the need to decriminalise. I listened carefully to the Minister's remarks. Every one of us is in favour of best medical practice. Nobody wants rogue operators, everyone wants things to be carried out properly. That is the same for abortion as a medical procedure as it is for every other medical practice. The committee recommended that all criminal sanctions that apply to women and girls should be lifted and that has been done, but the committee also recommended that doctors acting within the law within a clinical context should be decriminalised. I do not think that the way the legislation is drafted, in the absence of our amendment, actually achieves that. The Minister says that feelings are running high on this, but I am not sure they are. That is looking at it the wrong way around. We must look at this issue in the context of where we have come from and the chilling environment in which medical practitioners have traditionally operated. The concern is that this wording has taken the wording of the very restrictive Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, maintained the sanction, albeit for medical practitioners, and it is completely unnecessary. What we are saying is that the delivery of abortion must certainly be regulated but it should be regulated in the same manner as other medical procedures. Therefore anybody who operates outside the law should be subject to normal criminal sanction, which they would be. If a doctor removes someone's leg against their will or incarcerates them against their will, that person is open to criminal proceedings, on the one hand, and also to medical disciplinary proceedings. Over the many months worth of deliberations that we had in the committee we said that this was a normal healthcare provision and that doctors should be enabled to carry out their medical judgement in a medical setting in the same environment that they would any other procedure. Particularly given where we have come from in this State let us be clear, the likelihood of people trying to catch out doctors or make the legislation unworkable, something that is not in the interests of women or doctors, we do not need clauses in the legislation that would assist that happening. Full decriminalisation was a consistent theme at those committee hearings and anything less leaves us open to having the legislation undermined. It goes against the spirit of everything because consistently all the international and Irish studies show that in order to be compliant with international human rights, we should go for full decriminalisation. The amendment is necessary in that regard. By not accepting this amendment, we leave ourselves open to health providers being dissuaded from providing the best care to their patients than they otherwise would because they have this sitting on their backs. It is probably the key part of this committee's discussion in coming days. I strongly support the amendment and will press it.