Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister spoke about not having a mandate. I wonder when he will get a mandate. Will it be in the Fine Gael election manifesto seeking a repeal of the eighth amendment through a referendum? Other matters have been dealt with without a mandate. For example, the introduction of a property tax was expressly in the manifestoes of the two Government parties but they said the opposite of what happened. It strikes me that this is a means of avoiding taking a decision that needs to be taken.

When a principal officer from the Department of Health told a UN committee that denying the women in question the right to an abortion was the will of the people and it goes back to the eighth amendment, I recall from the body language of the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Frances Fitzgerald, on television how uncomfortable she was. Barbaric as this is within the country, it looks far worse from outside.

Over the past two years, I have gone several times with the Doctors for Choice group to the Liverpool Women’s Hospital. It has an outstanding record of trying to bring to term a compromised foetus. The hospital does not carry out a termination willy-nilly. The way women in such circumstances, indeed their families, are treated is very humane. The humanity shown by the staff to these women and their families was in such contrast to how they were treated here and the reason they had to go in the first place.

I would describe myself as pro-choice because I do not have the right to impose my will on another woman who has to take a pregnancy to term if she does not have the money to leave the country or it does not terminate in advance of a full 40-week term.

Further issues include the large cost that is involved and the risk to health created by the way in which the procedure is conducted. It is a two-stage process, yet many women return having only had one stage completed. The kind of overall care that is required in such circumstances has not been discussed by the Government side. We are putting women at risk.

A family wants to pay respect, not just to the foetus, but to the baby for which it hoped. People try to repatriate the remains through DHL packages or in the boots of cars-----

See this speech in context