Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

That is correct. When I was president of a students' union involved in legal battles with SPUC over the distribution of abortion information in students' union magazines, I would never have dreamt that 25 years later we would still be largely fighting the same issues. When so much has changed in Irish society in the intervening period, legally everything has remained the same.

Despite the fact that this is long overdue, I feel privileged to be in a position to be able to move this motion on the Bill today on behalf of myself and Deputies Wallace and Joan Collins in the Private Members' time of the ULA so that we can play our part in what we would have to acknowledge is an historic proposal before this House. It is the first time in the history of the State that a Bill is being put forward to advance, positively and constructively, the position of abortion rights and to attempt to deal pro-actively with a situation that is so often ignored. We acknowledge the fact that we are only in a position to do this as a result of the input and assistance that we got from Mr. Brendan Young, Ms Alison Spillane and, particularly, Ms Yvonne Murphy, without whose support this would not have been possible.

I think I speak for all of us when I say we are humbled to be moving this motion on the Bill on behalf of the 150,000 Irish women who have been exported from this country since the 1980s to access safe abortions in Britain, without adequate support, away from their families and friends and at significant financial cost, additional emotional trauma and stigma, and whose voices have been sidelined for decades and ignored. We are saying clearly today: "Not any more."

Women are not prepared to sit back and be silent any longer. We saw that clearly yesterday with the move of Arlette, Amanda, Jenny and Ruth, who over recent days went public and told their stories of the heartbreak of having to leave Ireland to terminate their pregnancies as the foetus would not have lived. Those women have lifted the lid on this situation in Ireland. They have been a real inspiration to us and to many thousands of people throughout this country in highlighting the complexities and sensitivities around these issues. They have given, and we are giving, a clear signal that people are not prepared to endure the pretence and hypocrisy that there is no abortion in Ireland when thousands of women must leave the country every year. I refer to women who need to access life-saving medical treatment, women who have become pregnant as a result of rape, women whose foetus would not survive the birth, women for whom another child would put the family into poverty, women who feel that they are too young or too old to have children, women who would have lost their job, and women would make that decision for a number of reasons, none of them ever easy and all of them valid. We absolutely reject the idea that these decisions are ever made lightly as a lifestyle choice. We know this because the people making the decisions are us - loving mothers, daughters, partners, wives, sisters, friends, etc. - who should be expecting support and assistance from the State, not isolation and condemnation, because the right to control what happens to your own body really is one of the most fundamental human rights of all.

Sadly, the Bill does not deal with all of these aspects and all of these cases. It is being put forward as drafted simply because it is the most straightforward legislation that can be advanced within the confines of the existing constitutional provisions. Our Bill can be legislated for without any complications and that is why we are putting it forward very much as a first step. It has been proofed by the international centre for reproductive rights. We are satisfied that it is well proofed. No doubt the Government will say there are one or two inaccuracies in it. That is normal for any new legislation. The Government itself will dramatically change the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill on Committee Stage. Equally, that can be done with our legislation; it is not a reason for stopping it.

To those who say that this Bill does not go far enough, our response is that we agree. There needs to be a far greater provision than that which we are providing here today, but that does not negate us taking the first step now. If we do so, we can immediately improve the position of women and that, in our opinion, would assist in moving the debate forward by allowing the expert group to concentrate on all the other issues and the need for a broader provision than what we have at present. We do not see any contradiction in that regard.

To explain a few aspects of the legislation, the Bill simply legislates for the X case to allow safe abortion in Ireland where the life of a woman is at risk, including the risk of suicide. We put this forward very much in the knowledge that it is not even 30 years since Ms Sheila Hodgers died in the Drogheda hospital, a woman denied and whose cancer treatment was stopped because it might have harmed her foetus. That woman died an agonising death. Her husband had to listen to her screams of pain. She left behind two young children and a loving husband because our medical system denied her life-saving treatment because she was pregnant.

It is 20 years since tens of thousands of citizens took to the streets to object to the internment of a 14 year old girl made pregnant as a result of rape and to stop the State's move to prevent her parents bringing her to England for an abortion. Twenty years ago, people voted overwhelmingly for the right to travel, for the right to abortion information and overwhelmingly against the overturning of the Supreme Court ruling which declared that it was constitutional in Ireland to have an abortion where the life, as distinct from the health, of a woman was at risk.

Ten years ago, again the Irish people voted to reject the attempts to row back on that decision. Decades of wavering have intervened. Not a single piece of legislation has been enacted throughout that period to give effect to that ruling. Sometimes we look back and pat ourselves on the back that we have left behind a country of the Magdelene laundries, of women's babies being basically sold, of the Kerry babies, of Ms Ann Lovett who died secretly giving birth in a graveyard, hidden and unable to talk to people, of symphysiotomy and the crimes to which we had to listen. We say how we have moved on from all of these matters, and yet successive Governments have allowed a situation where legislation lags behind that change by failing to bring the law up to date with the requirement that exists now.

We should acknowledge in truth that the only reason there is not more pressure to change on this issue and the only reason more women have not died as a result of successive Governments' inaction is our proximity to Britain which has acted as a safety valve in that regard. That is not good enough any longer. Particularly now in this era of economic austerity when people simply do not have the means to come up with thousands of euro to travel, it disproportionately affects working class women, poorer women, refugee women, of course, and women whose status in this country is insecure and who cannot avail of the option to travel in that regard.

The Bill allows for abortion in Ireland where it is necessary to save the life of a women based on the medical opinion of two medical practitioners, one of whom must be a clinical psychologist or a consultant psychiatrist where the risk to the life comes in the form of suicide. Those who have been lobbying against the Bill and contacting us over the past while, giving vent in the media, etc., have stated that this Bill is not necessary because life-saving treatment is available to women in Ireland already. Apart from the question of what the big fuss is about if all our Bill is doing is giving this reality an acknowledgement, of course, this is simply not the case. In Ireland, legislatively, it is still the case that a patient or somebody who provides an abortion could face life imprisonment for doing so except if the life of a woman is in danger. Precisely because there has been no legislation or policy guidelines, however, this means nothing is in place to allow this to happen.

The European Court of Human Rights, which my colleagues will deal with, did not find evidence of a single abortion being carried out on that basis. We have been deemed guilty of violating the human rights of Irish citizens by failing to provide that legislation. Even as recently as late 2010, cases have been documented where women were denied life-saving abortions in Irish hospitals despite the wishes and intentions of their medical advisers. That is a fact.

What our Bill seeks to address is those circumstances, and only those circumstances. If the Bill is not passed, women with life-threatening pregnancies and their doctors will be condemned to remain in exactly the same situation as existed 20 years ago, namely, forced to leave this country and forced to travel. That point has been recognised in opposition by the Labour Party, Sinn Féin and many Deputies from Fine Gael and the other parties. It is not good enough to recognise that and then hide behind the fact we have an expert group when we know the establishment of the expert group was delayed and that it will not issue any findings until July of this year. In effect, with the recess and all the other scheduling issues, this means anything it will come forward with will not see the light of the day for a full year.

We have an opportunity now to do something positive. If the Minister says our Bill is not perfect, and I am sure it is not, let us work together at amending it on Committee Stage. However, we need this Bill tabled and moved to the next Stage to advance the position for women in this regard.

To deal with some other aspects, the Bill provides for a second opinion being available if the woman is not happy with the decision of her medical practitioners. It provides for a right to appeal, with an obligation on the Medical Council to hear the case in a timely fashion because of the time pressures involved, which is in accordance with best international practice.

We also place a duty of care in the legislation on the medical practitioner and the medical institution to provide abortion while, at the same time, we acknowledge the personal beliefs of some people in that regard and, in some instances, a conflict between their beliefs and professional obligations. This is respected in the Bill which has built into it safeguards to prevent women's access to treatment being frustrated by a practitioner's personal beliefs. A doctor can object to providing treatment as long as an alternative is available and if his rejection does not endanger the life of the woman who needs the life-saving treatment. That same clause does not extend to the medical institution, which must provide the care, or to administrative staff, who must do their job regardless of their own beliefs on abortion and so on.

We also expressly provide for the fact that efforts must be made to seek consent but that if it cannot be established in line with other life-saving treatment, it will be deemed to have been given. There are penalties in the Bill with regard to people who would frustrate and try to obstruct a woman from getting access to this treatment in a timely fashion.

This debate is not about whether to allow abortion in Ireland. Irish abortion exists; it just does not take place in Ireland. That is simply not acceptable in 2012. We want the hypocrisy to end and we see this Bill as a very important step forward.

It is incredibly ironic that we are discussing this on the same day a landmark change is being proposed to the lone parents system and support for children, which is being removed after the child reaches the age of seven. We very much see this fight in the context of that one. The fight for the right of women to choose what to do with their own bodies is equally a fight for the right of people to decide to have children if they want them, and the right to have an opportunity to rear their children with respect, dignity, economic security and so on. That is what a real choice means. Today is merely a first step to bring our legislation up to date. It can be a turning point in our catching up with what has been long sought by the citizens in this country.

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