Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Would the Taoiseach accept that when he and his Ministers as an institution meet the Church as an institution, it is like a meeting of two relics of an evolutionary process which halted at a certain stage, while the evolutionary process in ideas and outlook continued with the people that the Taoiseach is supposed to represent, which leaves him and the Church, in matters that they discuss, away behind the people in their thinking? Since a predecessor of the Taoiseach in the 1980s made himself into a hostage to the Catholic Church and pioneered the eighth amendment to the Constitution, with disastrous consequences, does the Taoiseach not think that he has the responsibility to undo the damage that was done by the overweening influence of the Church that stage? The Taoiseach keeps on saying that the tragic situation of fatal foetal abnormality is sensitive and sad but he does not understand it. I am asking him to review very seriously what is at stake here. There is no hope of survival in these cases. The Taoiseach cannot throw out trite phrases about a hole in the heart child. We are talking here about anencephaly, for example, where the serious malfunction of embryonic development is unfortunately the absence of a human brain and skull. There is no possibility of survival. Whereas I want the eighth amendment removed completely, lawyers raise the serious point that within its narrow confine the Government could legislate for a humane and dignified response to women, couples and families in this terrible situation, rather than force them to resort to the shameful and painful Irish solution of going out of the country. The Taoiseach has heard their testimonies. Why will he not legislate for this situation?

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