Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In this country we talk about abortion as if it is a political or legal issue, something to be regulated by the majority and decided by consensus, informed by religion and morality and opinion polls and something to be debated on the airwaves, with an automatic requirement for balance, when groups with competing viewpoints can have their say. That is not how it should be. Terminating a pregnancy should not be a matter of public debate; it is something that ought to be discussed privately between a woman and her doctor, and with others if she so chooses. It is an intimate, highly personal choice, with the final decision to be made by the woman alone.

What the country needs is a Government that will finally produce sensible, well-thought out legislation wholly removed from the nuances of politics that will allow us to extricate ourselves from women's private reproductive health choices. Crisis pregnancies ought not be a matter of public debate. If a person is not intending to have one, abortion should be none of that person's business. Women all over the world have an abortion every day, for countless reasons, and it is not for me or anybody else to judge a woman for making that choice. If we are to learn anything from the past, women experiencing crisis pregnancies should be afforded extra privileges and protections. They should be listened to, cherished and supported, while their instincts should be trusted. They most certainly should not be treated like criminals, threatened with a custodial sentence, forced to be assessed by five doctors before they are believed, threatened with criminalisation, force fed or hydrated forcibly, or shipped out to our nearest neighbour, alone, confused and distressed. The country owes an apology to every woman who has been affected by these extreme laws and to every woman, past, present and future, who was or will be forced to travel abroad for a termination.

Article 40.3.3^owhich gives an undefined legal entity - the unborn - an equal right to life to that of the mother was voted on and inserted into the Constitution in 1983, in a climate of fear in the wake of the sexual liberation of the 1970s. Holy Catholic Ireland was still under the cosh of priests and bishops and no one of childbearing age today had a say in that referendum. Let us not forget that contraception was only legalised, with strong restrictions, in 1980. A woman's morality, intrinsically linked wjith her sexuality, was contained, policed, regulated and prescribed by the State. It is now widely accepted that abortion, in many cases, is not an objectionable practice but is, in fact, necessary and humane, particularly where the foetus has no chance of survival outside of the womb and in cases in which a woman becomes pregnant against her will as a result of having been raped. Most reasonable people agree that there are instances where terminating a pregnancy is the right thing to do. It is much more acceptable today for a person to publicly declare that he or she believes the final choice rests with the woman than it was in the 1980s.

The problem with Article 40.3.3^ois that it interprets every termination as unconstitutional. Even if a child of 11 or 12 years were to become pregnant as a result of rape, the Constitution states she should be forced to endure that pregnancy to full term, despite the fact that we all know this is wrong and amounts to torture. In Ireland women and doctors are criminalised if they attempt to procure an unlawful abortion, regardless of the circumstances, and can face up to 14 years in prison. In El Salvador a person would be treated like a murderer and given a life sentence, regardless of the circumstances involved. Ireland's laws may not appear on the surface to be as harsh, but the principle is the same. Recently, Colm O'Gorman of Amnesty Ireland visited El Salvador and said he believed it was not dissimilar to Ireland. He said:

Just like El Salvador, those who need to access an abortion and who can afford to do so, travel to another jurisdiction. Those who cannot just have to find some way to cope with their situation. In many ways, El Salvador is Ireland without the safety valve of England. In both countries, women and girls are legally prevented, by threat of imprisonment, from making deeply personal choices about how to best manage a risk to their lives or health posed by a pregnancy. Addressing this in either country requires political leadership and courage. It's about time we saw more of both.

Last night the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Leo Varadkar, told us that the Government did not have a mandate to deal with this issue. Tonight Deputy Eoghan Murphy told us it had. For the Minister to say the Government does not have a mandate is difficult to accept because it has done things it did not have a mandate to do, but it is still in government.

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