Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Please give a break to the young women in this country who face daily the obstacle of not being able to procure abortions at home. The Minister and I know, as well as the dogs in the street, that they can go abroad and we can export the problem. They can also obtain the materials for an abortion illegally over the web. I happen to be in favour of a united Ireland and I find it difficult to recognise the Border at all. I am certainly against a hard Border. Currently, north of the Border, three women have faced the courts with a punitive sentence of life imprisonment being available to the courts in Northern Ireland as punishment for obtaining the abortion pill. That is the reason I am putting forward this legislation. I am not gagging or seeking sensationalism. I am not messing. I am seriously saying to the Deputies in this House, "How dare you?"

Most of the other people who spoke tonight against the Bill were men. Are there no women in Fianna Fáil for example? Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív maintains that I do not respect him, but I absolutely respect his beliefs, as well as those of his wife and anybody else in the House. I do not respect their imposition of their beliefs on me, the women in the Visitors Gallery or anybody else in this country. They have no right to impose their personal beliefs on the rest of us and allow for a 14-year sentence for that act.

We must have some sense of urgency and not wait for what will at least be another year before the Citizens' Assembly's product comes back to us and we have a vote on it. As Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett rightly and eloquently pointed out, even then this law and the punitive 14-year sentence will remain in the Statute Book. At least the Minister understood what I was talking about, unlike the Taoiseach, who referred to a partner kicking a woman in the belly and getting away with a €1 fine. How silly, ridiculous and dismissive of the seriousness with which we are dealing with this matter.

I appeal to Deputies to speak to the subject and think about the issue. This is a 14-year sentence that can be applied to women, counsellor, doctors, advisers and anybody helping a woman to procure an abortion.

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