Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill and thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Ó Caoláin for bringing this Bill into the Dáil. I welcome the survivors and salute those who are here and those who could not make it tonight.

I listened to the debate last night and a number of speakers asked how or why the breaking or rendering asunder of a woman's pelvic bone could happen. That has been addressed today because we have heard how there was and still is a prevailing culture of religious motivation. Women in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s could not control their bodies and could not have access to family planning. The idea that some doctors felt they could carry out this barbaric process so they would not have to recommend family planning or sterilisation if a woman had more than four caesarean sections was absolutely disgusting. Some doctors used this process for clinical training and for experimental purposes. It beggars believe that attitude could prevail in the medical profession but it is still there, as we saw with the recent death of Savita Halappanavar. As a result of this ethos surrounding abortion, a point was reached where Savita's life was weighed up against the life of the unviable foetus inside her.

Deputy Ó Caoláin referred to Rita McCann, whose story demonstrated the thinking of the time. She was asked to sign a form a number of days after her pelvic bones were broken so she could receive internal stitches. It was okay to mutilate her body but she had to be given a form to sign for internal stitches.

I was shaking my head when Deputy Buttimer was speaking because there was a guarded welcome from the Government for the Survivors of Symphysiotomy group. There was a lack of enthusiasm from the Minister for Health last night. He said he would accept the Bill but then said there were serious flaws in it. What are they? He said the Bill might not achieve the desired objectives. Why not? He said that before the Bill goes any further, we should wait for the final Walsh report. Why? That report has been exposed as totally irrelevant, particularly following the recent Supreme Court case, where the judges said symphysiotomy was unjustified and unjustifiable, that it was not a medical procedure that could be stood over.

This Bill is three short paragraphs; it is carefully drafted legislation modelled on the 2000 Act that lifted the statute bar for survivors of abuse in residential institutions. It could be passed very quickly. We do not want these women to have to wait for another year, not Ellen O'Brien, who is 90 years of age, or those other women in their 70s and 80s. The Bill should be sent on to Committee Stage and returned to the Dáil within a month.

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