Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Last Saturday the Taoiseach was 50 metres away from an historic demonstration - the 25,000 strong, predominantly youthful March for Choice which took place in Dublin and called for the holding of a referendum to repeal the eighth amendment abortion ban, something he has continually tried to avoid, despite all the polls which show a huge demand for it. At the end of the protest the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs posited the idea that we might need something to replace the eighth amendment in the Constitution. Does the Taoiseach agree with her and, if so, why? Why, following the tragedies and the folly of putting something in the Constitution equating a woman with a foetus, would he seriously contemplate putting something else in to police women's bodies? There is nothing normal about putting anything about abortion or women's health in a constitution. I am aware of only one other country that has done it. It was done in Chile under the murderous military dictator General Pinochet. On behalf of women and young people in this country, I ask the Taoiseach not to go there. He has been a Member of the House for 41 years, since 1975. During that time he has taken part in important decisions affecting women. A total of 165,000 women have had to travel outside the State for an abortion while he has been a Member of the Dáil. Did he give those women a second thought when he was debating these crucial decisions?

In what could be one of his final acts as Taoiseach, I ask him to break a pattern of more than four decades of him being on the more backward, conservative side of all these vital decisions in the Dáil. He was in the House to vote in favour of the eighth amendment in 1983. Did he have any qualm at all having heard the reservations of the Attorney General at the time and many others? He was here to vote in favour of the "off you go" clauses in 1992 on travel and information and, crucially, was leader of the country when a pivotal event happened when a women needlessly died in a Galway hospital, having asked for and been refused an abortion. He could have ensured that would never happen again in this country, but that is not the case now. He ignored the pleas of Savita's parents, for example, to introduce a law to protect women's health, but rather than repeal the eighth amendment, he chose to criminalise women for having abortions. Will he, for the first time, listen to and trust women to make these decisions for themselves? Will he agree that it has been proved that the Constitution is not the place in which to decide on these issues and that, ultimately, the church and the State have to stay out of personal decisions? We all know that there will be a referendum. Will he make sure that it will be to repeal, not amend, the eighth amendment?

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