Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I move the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Right to Personal Autonomy and Bodily Integrity) Bill 2014 with a mixture of sadness, feeling a bit mad as well as glad. This Bill seeks to repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution Act 1983 to protect women’s lives, health and choices. It is regrettable that we have to do this, that we have to acknowledge the background to this and the fact that so many women’s lives have been negatively impacted upon by the State’s decision to take women’s health and reproductive choices out of our hands and put them into the Constitution. That decision has resulted in horrendous scenarios for women, including several unnecessary deaths - casualties of a nation’s hypocrisy. It is regrettable that decades down the road it has been left to the Opposition to use this twilight slot at the end of a Dáil term to launch a last-minute plea to the Government on this issue. We are actually not begging but demanding that the Government respects women, our health and our human rights and repeals the eight amendment. It is a regrettable that, given the Government announced today it will hold several referenda in early May, it could not also include this Bill when it is such a long overdue measure. It is a poor reflection on the Government that it is not introducing this amendment.

That said, I am glad to have the opportunity to introduce the Bill. It is a significant and important issue in which I have been involved through all my adult life. It is an issue which affected ten women today, ten women yesterday and will affect ten women tomorrow. They will be forced to take the journey from these shores to access what is a routine medical treatment in many other countries. This Parliament now has an important opportunity with this Bill to do something positive. We have a chance to send a signal that we meant it when we said we were sorry to the women who were banished behind the Magdalen laundries, to the women who had their babies taken from them to be given up in forced adoptions or to those women who had their pelvises broken in symphysiotomy, as well as for the way we treated crisis pregnancies of the past. If we really meant all that, we would ensure it would not happen again. Instead, all of that has been replaced by a Ryanair ticket or a packet of pills illegally purchased over the Internet with the possibility of a criminal sanction.

If we were serious and meant it when we said this is a new era we would develop a society that supports people rather than passes judgment on them. Society should be open and should not stigmatise women, thus forcing them into secretive behaviour. We must respect women and the choices they make and trust that they know what is best for them. This Bill gives us the opportunity to do something positive at the end of this term so the Government should reconsider its attitude and include this measure among the referenda to be held in the new year.

When we consider repealing the eighth amendment of the Constitution we should examine how it came about in the first place. In 1983 abortion was already illegal in Ireland. Under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 the penalty for abortion was penal servitude for the woman involved and anyone who helped, including a doctor or medical practitioner. This created a serious chilling effect but in the background society was changing via the swinging 60s and the movement in the 1970s. Women demanded access to contraception and wanted to be a part of the workforce. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Roe vWade judgment was handed down and certain elements of Irish society, particularly those in the Catholic hierarchy, felt that the abortion ban here could be undermined through the courts. In the early 1980s they began a well-funded and well-organised pro-life amendment campaign using sustained political pressure to be sure there would be no abortion in Ireland.

This unmitigated failure must be our starting point because the campaign stopped abortion in Ireland but did not stop Irish abortion. Some 160,000 women were expelled from this country in order to access treatment and every family in the State has been affected, whether they know it or not. Women were stigmatised and told not to talk about it, extending an unbroken thread from the days when we hid women in Magdalen laundries. We could call it an Irish solution to an Irish problem but it was more than that; it was an English solution to an Irish problem. Let us be clear, if it were not for the proximity of Britain, far more women would have lost their lives to this reprehensible amendment. If it were not for the proximity of Britain, there would have been a campaign to eliminate this provision before now because the eighth amendment says the State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect and, as far as is practicable by its laws, defend and vindicate that right. How could anyone make sense of this? The confusion was evident at the time.

It is ironic that a Fine Gael and Labour Party Government moved the referendum but used the wording put forward by Fianna Fáil. The Government at that time ended up in this position because it gave a free vote to all Deputies and, again, this is ironic as it illustrates that the democratic revolution promised by this is redundant. It is particularly sickening that much of what has happened since the passing of that referendum was forewarned. The legal problems were flagged by the Attorney General of the time who warned those seeking protection and certainty that this measure would have the opposite effect. The Government was told on moving the referendum that it would conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights, and it did, but the State pressed on and the referendum was passed by a two to one majority with only 53% of voters participating.

Some thirty years on, this referendum is referred to as the decision of the Irish people. Most of those involved in that referendum are no longer around and it is not the mandate of the Irish people. We face a peculiar scenario where everything is different but stays the same. Legislatively everything is the same but abortion is actually a normal part of everyone's reproductive life in Ireland because Ireland's abortion rate is comparable to that in every other country. The attitudes of Irish people have moved on and the Government is out of touch. The result of all this is poor women and those with a precarious immigration status in the country cannot exercise the constitutional right to abortion. That right says women can have abortions but not in Ireland and those who are too sick, disabled or impoverished pay the price.

I welcome the statements of Mr. John Douglas, general secretary of the Mandate trade union and president the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, who believes this is an important trade union issue. In welcoming this legislation he made the point that many Mandate members are low-paid and the cost of travelling for this treatment can equate to over 10% of annual income, forcing many young women into debt and causing serious mental health problems.

I know the Minister saw the tragic report inThe Irish Times yesterday as it highlighted the fact that in the past 12 months some 26 asylum seekers and women facing travel restrictions came to the Irish Family Planning Association for help with an abortion. The association said those women faced insurmountable obstacles - five of them had to continue their pregnancies and four of them tried to self-induce an abortion. This is the reality and the chilling effect of the legislation that is still on our books but it is not a surprise as these issues were well-flagged by the United Nations Human Rights Committee last year. All too tragically, the predicted events came to pass in the horrific Y case. I will not go into the details of that case but it is horrendous that the young woman involved must go through the court process at the moment. It is beyond dispute that she was suicidal, that her life was in danger and that she was a rape victim; in other words, the circumstances mirrored those of the X case, the very circumstances that the Government said the new legislation would provide for. The young woman involved could not access an abortion in Ireland and while the European Court of Human Rights ruled that we have an obligation to provide for the legal right to an abortion in those circumstances this was not delivered on. Yesterday's report highlighted the fact that in the A and B cases the court ruled in favour of Ireland as the women were able to travel to other states to access treatment. The 26 women who came to the Irish Family Planning Association could take a case against the Irish State and win because they have been denied the right to travel. The Y case exposed the inadequacy of Irish legislation in this area in a horrific way. We are shackled to the eighth amendment and the words of Mr. Nigel Rodley ring true: the young woman involved in the case is nothing more than a vessel as her opinions and rights do not count.

The constitutional barrier is at the heart of this issue and must be addressed. We are debating this today because 30 years ago the State built an impossible Chinese wall between defending the right to life and the right to health. This cannot be done and is completely out of sync with the rest of Europe as some 44 of the 47 states allow abortion to protect a woman's health. The peculiar clause in the Constitution that we seek to amend has resulted in a scenario the former Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Alan Shatter, highlighted well when we moved legislation here previously. He made the clear point that:

In the absence of constitutional change, there will continue to be a British solution to this Irish problem. It is also the position that a pregnancy which poses a serious risk to the health, as opposed to the life, of a woman - even where such risk could result in permanent incapacity - does not provide a basis for effecting a termination in this State.

He went on to state that this constitutional provision meant that not all our citizens are equal and women have only a qualified right to health. Anyone in favour of equality for women in this State must recognise that the eighth amendment must go. The Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral at the time of the referendum in the 1980s made a prophetic and valid point when he said that the Constitution should steer clear of controversial and moral questions. He was absolutely right.

In successive opinion polls a majority of the Irish people have said they favour a repeal of the eighth amendment.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has said that for Ireland to be compliant with human rights laws, we need to revisit our Constitution in respect of these matters. A considerable number of Deputies from the Government benches, including prominent Ministers, have come out and said that we need to repeal the eighth amendment. They have clarified this, however, by suggesting it should not happen on their watch and that we need to wait for someone else to do it. This is not good enough for the ten women who had to leave Ireland today or for the women who have had to risk purchasing abortion pills over the Internet. While I recognise the statement the Minister made today to the effect that he believes our abortion legislation will be different in 20 years time - I agree that it will be - it is not good enough for the Minister for Health now to say that. We need to revisit this issue immediately.

This is not about whether Deputies or individuals in the House agree with abortion or otherwise. That is a personal matter and it has nothing to do with it. If a woman does not want to have an abortion or if someone's partner does not want to have an abortion, I will spend my time defending their right to continue with a pregnancy rather than be forced to end it. Thankfully, that scenario does not arise in this State, except for some circumstances in which economic poverty, in many instances stood over by this Government, by attacking single parents and so on, has meant that some people who would like the choice of having a child cannot elect to do so because of economic reasons. The issue is not whether anyone is for or against abortion but whether the Minister respects women's right to make that decision for themselves.

There is no mystery about this. The women who have abortions are the women who have children. It is as simple as that. They include me, other female Deputies, the Minister's partner, his mother and my daughter. In women's reproductive lives, which span from the early teens sometimes into their early fifties, choices will be made. As a society we expect women to manage their fertility and when they have their family, children and so on. It is a valid expectation in a modern society. There will be many instances in the 30 to 40 years of sexual activity and possible reproduction when women will be faced with having to make this decision. None of these decisions is easy or taken lightly. All of them are valid because they are the decisions of the women themselves. It vindicates an international statistic suggesting that on a global scale one in three women will have an abortion in their lifetime. It is not a big deal. In most instances it is like a miscarriage. That is all it is: a little cramping and a little bleeding. It can be done relatively simply.

In previous debates the Minister made the point that human experience is not black and white. He made the point that we will never get perfect legislation to remove all of life's tragedies. I agree fully with the Minister's statement; he is absolutely right. Regret and tragedy are part and parcel of life, but the least we can do is ensure that when people experience a crisis, they are supported and helped rather than stigmatised and cast out. The role of the State in these instances should be to ease the burden of people rather than add to it. Of course the rape victim who becomes pregnant has been violated and her life has been irretrievably altered, but should we make it worse by saying she has to carry the resulting pregnancy to full-term against her will? Let us consider the family of a much-wanted pregnancy who discover that the foetus has an abnormality incompatible with life. Would they not wish for anything other than having to terminate the pregnancy? Of course they would. The least we can do is free them from the cruel and degrading treatment of carrying that pregnancy to full term, having people congratulate them or being expelled from this country away from their family and support. Is that not what a civilised society would do? What of the case of someone who perhaps faces permanent incapacity and who must make the choice to have a termination? Should that person be criminalised by that? That is all that this Bill seeks to do and that is all that we want to do.

No one currently of a reproductive age has had a chance to vote on this matter. That is absolutely ridiculous even from a basic democratic standpoint. People who can get pregnant now should have a right to a say on the matter. That is all we are asking for. The only response the Minister gave on this issue when we discussed it previously was that if we were to remove the eighth amendment, we would remove all protections for women. That is bizarre. It is as if suddenly women were going to be the victims of some rampaging murderers or whatever. In actual fact we would only be put in the same position as men and our bodily integrity would be correspondingly protected. The reality is that our Constitution does not protect women. In fact it has been interpreted to mean that women's constitutional rights have been successively subordinated to the right of the foetus to be born. Instead with this legislation we seek to replace the current provision with an explicit commitment to bodily integrity of born persons.

The Minister would do everyone a great service if he were to announce today that he will include this referendum with the others scheduled for May. It is ridiculous that we have to say it in this day and age but it would be an incredible step forward for human rights in this State, for women's health and choice and for the rights of pregnant people to make decisions about their bodies and whether to have children or otherwise.

This is not about whether people agree with abortion or otherwise. That is absolutely irrelevant. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that is a private matter. It should be decided between a woman and her doctor, with full support and backup to ensure any decision is the best decision for her. Whether the decision is to end the pregnancy or to continue it, what matters is that she gets the necessary support and backup. This is an opportunity to bring us into the modern era, to make us human rights complaint and to protect women's health. I urge the Minister to reconsider and agree.

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