Michael Conaghan (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I well remember the 1983 referendum campaign. It was a bitter, vicious campaign. During the campaign I held a public meeting in my local electoral area. There were no more than ten people present, among them a future President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and Dr. Paddy Leahy, the general practitioner in Ballyfermot who was a fearless advocate of women's rights throughout the campaign. Also in attendance was a Jewish doctor from Inchicore and a few women. I wonder if I held that meeting now in the aftermath of the tragedy in Galway how many would attend. I believe the hall would be overflowing. Public opinion at that time was fixed firmly against the message we were trying to get across, the message that women's health in all its dimensions must be the overriding priority. Those of us who campaigned against the Constitutional amendment were shunned by a large section of society. Names were read out from the pulpit by furious priests and bishops and doors were slammed in our faces, etc.

Since the early 1980s, the debate on legislating for abortion in certain circumstances has always been drawn straight to the extremes. As someone who favours the availability of abortion in limited circumstances, I still consider myself to be pro-life. Killing babies is wrong, let there be no doubt about that. Despite some of the more extreme rhetoric on the anti-abortion side that is not what this is about. This is about achieving a balance that gives due regard to the life, health and well-being of women. Difficult situations exist and arise. Doctors are regularly faced with difficult decisions whereby the life of a mother is in danger. It happens and when it does we must choose on the side of a woman's life. Doctors must be confident that they can make the right decision in the interests of women's health within a clear legal framework free from the spectre of 150 year-old legislation that would have them treated as murderers.

At the heart of the dilemma is the failure of the Constitution and the law to adequately express how to tackle these situations. The legal position as it stands limits the choices a doctor has and, as a result, endangers women. This has been dramatically demonstrated by the case of Savita Halappanavar. Although this tragic case is still under investigation it seems to me that it was preventable; it should not have happened. An option that could have saved her life was closed off to the doctors because of the legal uncertainty.

To atone for this tragedy we must act in the Dáil and introduce the necessary and long overdue legislation. We need to make political decisions to minimise the risk. For too long we have failed to remove the obstacles to protect women's safety during pregnancy and childbirth, the most vulnerable point in their lives. There have been other tragedies many of which have never reached the pages of the national newspapers because women's health has never been properly guaranteed. Therefore, we must act to remove the risk, the burden and the dread and we must act now.

Tragedies such as the recent one in Galway manifest themselves in various forms and at various times. We cannot go back to the days of women being afraid to go to hospital for fear of their lives and instead being driven down the backstreets and into dark basements for illegal, unsafe abortions. The story of nurse Mamie Cadden, who performed abortions in Dublin in secret in the face of the law and who was sentenced to death in 1956, is an example of the desperate choices women were forced to make. Nor can we continue to rely on an English solution to an Irish problem. Abortion is available to Irish women, at least those who can afford it, in England. A total of 4,000 young Irish women avail of this every year. This is not acceptable. These women are forced to travel, often alone, without any support and, on their return, they feel they must hide their shameful secret. They endure an emotional ordeal the likes of which I can only imagine, without access to the psychiatric support etc. they need. Any framework that forces women into this position is wrong. If a women finds herself in a position where she believes she has no option but to terminate her pregnancy, she must have access to support and not be cast out on her own.

The 1983 amendment is a cul-de-sac into which we have pushed women’s lives and we have sent them into this cul-de-sac at the most critical time in their lives. For the pro-life movement, the 1983 amendment was the solution to any future challenge. It put two lives - that of the mother and that of the unborn child - on an equal footing but instead of answering any future questions, this measure has made these questions more difficult to answer. While the idea of another referendum on abortion has, to date, been propagated only by the pro-life side, I also believe such an initiative may be needed to provide further clarity.

The campaign for reproductive rights and women's rights is not new. It did not start last month, last year or even 20 years' ago. A clear legal framework in which pregnancies can be legally terminated has been a political imperative for over 30 years but successive Governments have failed repeatedly to act. I have great admiration for the work of Jim Kemmy. Thirty years ago at the helm of the Democratic Socialist Party, DSP, he charted a practical and courageous course. The DSP was a relatively small party but size did not limit its vision on abortion, Northern Ireland, Europe, workers’ rights, the patronage of schools and many more subjects. The course it laid out on abortion was not a popular one at the time but one would have to admire the courage and foresight that Jim Kemmy and the DSP demonstrated.

At that time, one church set the moral parameters of political discourse and no established party was prepared to take it on. The orthodoxy at the time was that women had to take their chances and take their lives into their own hands. Jim Kemmy publicly challenged this orthodoxy and our entire political culture, and he paid a political price for it. The position that Jim Kemmy outlined and defended in the face of widespread opposition would have prevented many of the terrible, gruesome situations which have arisen over the past 30 years. He firmly believed that an absolute prohibition on abortion could not be justified as it may be necessary in certain, limited circumstances. Had his course of action been followed, X would not have needed to go to the Supreme Court in such tragic circumstances. Twenty years later, C would not have needed to go to the European Court of Human Rights. Although all the facts are not yet clear, I believe that had Jim Kemmy’s course been followed in 1983, the circumstances of the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar may never have arisen. The following is an extract from the DSP's "Outline Policy on Women’s Rights", first published in 1982:

The woman who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy is presented with a catch-22 situation. Does she hide herself in a maternity hostel for 6 months, in the process losing her job or missing essential schooling? Does she face the social ostracisation of neighbours and work-mates for 9 months and then go through the trauma of adoption? Does she try to keep her child and spend many years in a desperate economic struggle, all the time apologising for her child’s existence? Or does she take the boat to England and have an abortion? Thousands of Irish women are annually making the latter choice. Many of these women are pregnant as a result of the inadequacy of contraceptive facilities here. Many are extremely young and pregnant through ignorance due to the lack of adequate sex-education in schools. Some are pregnant as a result of rape. Under Irish law, they are criminals if they opt for abortion. The morality which says to these women and girls that they must suffer the consequences, and which at the same time, ostracises the unmarried or widowed woman who is pregnant, must be exposed for the hypocrisy it is. The D.S.P. while opposed to indiscriminate abortion would consider it as a solution: where a woman’s life is endangered by pregnancy; where pregnancy has resulted from rape or incest; and to the terrible problems of congenital abnormality of the foetus which makes survival outside the womb impossible. The DSP confirms its view that this is a perfectly moral position to uphold in a pluralistic Irish society.

This policy, considered barbaric by so many when it was first outlined in 1982, appears so reasonable and sensible to the majority of Irish public opinion 30 years later. A generation later, our political culture has broadened and finally caught up, and as we move forward, I suggest that this framework may well be the best guide. This sensible, moral position cost Jim Kemmy his seat in Dáil Éireann in 1982. During this campaign, he was denounced from the pulpit and pilloried by the local press, with the Limerick Leaderwriting "Abortionist Jim Kemmy is hitting below the belt" and "let the people decide which is the better way – the pro-life way or Kemmy's way of death".

His brave and prescient position was exploited by his political opponents and his seat was lost. This was the price he paid for his foresight and commitment to women's rights. I am very happy that 30 years later public opinion has shifted so far towards what Jim Kemmy believed. I only hope now that the Members of the House honour his memory by doing the right thing and not shirking their responsibility as legislators and take the long overdue steps needed to protect women's lives.

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