Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

-----that a woman could be jailed for 14 years for procuring an abortion. What a scandal it is that we could potentially involve the police, courts and judges in what is the most intimate sphere of life for any woman. What a horrible law this is and it shows how rotten is the eighth amendment and why it must go. That is in addition to all the other arguments.

I will read into the record of the House the names of the Ministers currently sitting at the Cabinet tabled who voted in the previous Dáil to keep the wording in the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 that allows a woman to be jailed for 14 years for procuring an abortion in this State. They are Deputies Richard Bruton, Simon Coveney, Michael Creed, Regina Doherty, Paschal Donohoe, Frances Fitzgerald, Charles Flanagan, Enda Kenny, Mary Mitchell O'Connor, Denis Naughten, Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris. I see there are campaigners for repealing the eighth amendment in the Visitors Gallery. I would say to them without hesitation that the names of those Deputies who vote against taking that horrible provision out of the laws of the land in the vote on Thursday, as well as the Deputies who abstain, should be made known throughout the land. I have no hesitation in saying they should be named and shamed.

This Bill appears before the Dáil at a very timely moment. Tomorrow, on 8 March, we have International Women's Day and it is an historic moment for women in Ireland. For the first time, all marches, rallies and demonstrations taking place on the day are unmistakably linked with the urgent need to repeal the eighth amendment. Tomorrow, thousands of women and men will take to the streets of our major cities expressing their disgust with the anachronistic laws in this country that treat women as criminals for wanting the obvious, which is access to and control over their bodies and reproductive rights. I am proud to say the Anti-Austerity Alliance Deputies will be taking part in as many of these actions as we can tomorrow and we are calling on everybody to join us.

It is horrific to think the history of the State is absolutely tainted from the get-go with the appalling treatment of women and women's health. It amounts to appalling treatment I would not hesitate to describe as crimes against women, some of which the State and church are still pretending never happened or were not sufficiently serious to merit full apology or proper redress. These include symphysiotomy, the Magdalen laundries, revelations about the Tuam home cruelties, the Grace case and the social stigma that unmarried mothers had to endure for years, as well as the punishments that came with that. There were hundreds of cases of sexual abuse being covered up and, more recently, women were denied the dignity of their own choice over their body. There are examples from the X case 25 years ago to Ms Y one year ago, the case of an under-age suicidal rape victim and asylum seeker who was forced to carry on with her pregnancy until it was safe to conduct a caesarean section, despite repeatedly asking for termination of her unwanted and forced-upon pregnancy. This is not to mention the cruelty committed every single day when women of all ages facing a plethora of different personal issues are forced to travel abroad, mainly to England, because the Constitution treats them as second-class citizens.

I will conclude as I do not want to eat into Deputy Bríd Smith's time. It is essential to bring forward Bills like this. Tomorrow, we will see a clear and unequivocal message from the thousands of people who will take part in the strike for repeal and the march for repeal. It is time for Ireland to shake off any relic of a backwards and mediaeval state and decriminalise abortion. We must stop exporting it and remove all the legal obstacles for women to access their bodily autonomy.

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