Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise the circumstances surrounding the Y case and the subsequent report. The last time I addressed this issue was on the day the Dáil went into recess. That was in the week when the United Nations criticised the Irish abortion regime, particularly in cases of rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormality and where the woman’s health is at risk.

Since then there has been the tragic Y case and the publication of draft guidelines which appear to be even more restrictive than the limited legislation. Under the guidelines, Ms Y would be even less likely to have received the termination she requested. A consultant psychiatrist, Veronica O’Keane, writing in The Sunday Business Postsaid that the opening statement of the draft guidelines serve to reinforce the complete prohibition on abortion and not, as one might expect, to make abortion legal when a woman’s life is at risk.

Over the summer we read the barbaric details of the Y case. A very young woman arrived in a foreign country having been raped and was told that it was not within her financial remit to have a termination. After attempting suicide she was forced to deliver the baby through an unwanted caesarean section. There have been the X case and the tragic Savita Halappanavar case. We are running out of letters in the alphabet for these cases. Behind each one is a real woman who happens to be a wife, a sister, a mother, a daughter.

This Saturday people will take to the streets in a march for choice. Each time this happens the numbers grow. How many times will it take for this to happen before the Government listens and acts?

To judge by the report, the young woman involved was not even consulted. Everyone else seems to have been consulted but not her. The Government can ignore the calls for the repeal of the eighth amendment. The last time I asked the Tánaiste about this she said people were consulted in 1983. One had to have been born before 1966 to have been consulted then.

Did the Tánaiste see the guidelines? Did she agree to the guidelines? Is she aware that the guidelines are more restrictive than the legislation? Will she acknowledge the public calls to repeal the eighth amendment and the changing public opinion on repealing it?

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