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

Many Government spokespersons have called for a rational, sensible and sensitive debate on this sensitive issue. That is fair enough but let us clarify what this debate about. It is not about anyone's personal views on abortion. While everyone is welcome to his or her views on the issue, people should also be able to make decisions about their lives, health and welfare. This debate is about the fact that half of the population - women - are denied the right to make decisions about their lives, health and welfare, sometimes in the most cruel, difficult and traumatic circumstances.

For the State, under any circumstances, to prohibit women from taking an action they deem necessary to safeguard their lives, health or welfare is obnoxious and repugnant. To force a pregnant woman who has suffered rape, incest or abuse or who knows the child she is carrying will not live into taking a certain course of action against her will by denying her the right to make her own choices in such awful, tragic and traumatic circumstances is barbaric. There is no other way of describing it.

Notwithstanding all of the fierce debates, arguments and differences Deputies have over many issues, I do not believe - at least I do not want to believe - that any Member of the Oireachtas would knowingly and deliberately inflict unnecessary cruelty and hardship if he or she believed another choice was available. While I disagree fundamentally with the imposition of austerity, water charges and so forth, I accept that Government Deputies who defend such measures probably believe they must be introduced because the Government does not have a choice. In this case, however, the Government has a choice and is choosing to deny women their choice. How can it possibly allow the current position to persist when it knows that tomorrow a dozen women will suffer needless cruelty, hardship and suffering as a result of a crisis pregnancy, an unviable pregnancy or a pregnancy arising from rape or abuse? It proposes to allow these circumstances to continue by maintaining the State's prohibition on women having the choice and the provision of facilities for them to exercise that choice. In so doing, it is allowing the crisis to become even worse because it stigmatises these women by describing as criminal the choice they may make to travel to Britain and forces on them the extra hardship involved in making that journey. The Government is proposing to allow the current position to continue when it has the choice of changing it. This is a choice that women do not have. I cannot understand that position, particularly as within months of being passed, the Government's legislation failed to deliver its promised objectives.

The Government has also failed in the area of fatal foetal abnormalities. I had a daughter who died because she had a fatal foetal abnormality. We did not know she would be born that way and she died a few weeks after birth. It was a very hard thing to be told that a baby who has been born and whom one wanted to have has a condition that is incompatible with life. It is still very hard to get my head around that. When the issue of fatal foetal abnormalities entered public debate I asked the mother of our daughter what she would have done if she had known about the condition in advance. We both agreed that we did not know what we would have done. We were, however, certain that we would have wanted to have a choice because there was no good way out of the situation, which would have been tragic and life-changing either way.

It is barbaric to deny a woman who discovers that the child she wants will die the right to make the choice about how such an awful tragic situation should unfold. This scenario and the tragic, traumatic and awful cases involving rape and incest are what we are about to allow to continue. The choice we have is not to stop all suffering or tragedy but to prevent additional suffering from occurring, ensure the State does not make these awful, tragic, desperate and frequently life-changing cases worse and provide in this State as much support as possible for the women in question.

For people in the Labour Party who talk about equality, women's rights and wanting to end suffering to allow a situation to continue whereby suffering persists when we could do something else is really awful. I thank Deputy Clare Daly.

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