Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In response to what the Minister said, the point of these amendments is to state the key imperative is to protect women's lives because they have not been protected. Of course the Minister is right to say that the Constitution as it currently stands, reinforced by the X case judgment, provides protection for what is called the "unborn child" although it did not define what that is. This is something the Minister has done, in such a way as to expand that definition to a point that is very problematic. As we will see when we return to it, it is extremely problematic particularly in the tragic circumstance of fatal foetal abnormalities. It may preclude any future effort by the Minister's Government or any other to allow for terminations in those tragic circumstances.

The substantive point of these amendments is to state that although legal protections have existed and continue to exist for what is termed the unborn child no protections have existed for the lives of women which is what we are trying to address. That is what most people believe this Bill was supposed to do, to prevent tragic circumstances such as those of the X case, where a 14 year old child was raped and became suicidal, was threatened with incarceration and denied the right to have an abortion in this country, or the case of a woman like Savita whose life might be put at risk because of the legal situation surrounding abortion.

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