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

There are big metal barriers outside Buswells Hotel and it is impossible to move in and out. Only that I am a Deputy and the gardaí recognised me, I would not have been able to move. Why is there such paranoia about this subject and women? Why is society so terrified to allow women to have a voice on an issue that has everything to do with their bodies? The vast majority of people out there are ordinary young women.

They were not going to storm the gates of Leinster House and come in with submachine guns to mow us all down. They are out there to plead with us for God's sake to get on with it.

This Dáil has a shameful history of dealing with this issue. I saw that with my own eyes long before I came in here. It used to crease me to see that for 21 years after the Supreme Court ruled on the X case, there was cowardice played out in this House. No party had the guts to move on this issue until Deputy Clare Daly brought in the first Bill in, I understand, April 2012. That was the first time anybody had the guts to say this was an issue and we have to confront it.

There was a campaign in 1983 for the eighth amendment, and I am acutely aware of Joanne Hayes, the Kerry babies and all of the statistics. I am also acutely aware that anybody under the age of 45 years, not just Deputy McDonald's daughter, is horrified today having read the details of what happened to Joanne Hayes all those years ago. We are not just talking about the darkness of the 1980s.

In 2017, a young woman was sectioned under the Mental Health Act because she said she was suicidal and wanted to have an abortion. In 2014, we kept a clinically dead woman alive for several weeks against the wishes of her family because the foetus inside her had a heartbeat. In 2014, a raped asylum seeker was forced against her will to continue with a pregnancy. In 2012, Savita Halappanavar died, having requested an abortion in a hospital in Galway. We have the alphabet soup of Miss X, Miss C and Miss D. I could go on and on. We have the condemnation by the UN Human Rights Commission that what happened to Amanda Mellet was inhumane, degrading and cruel. What does that say about this country and the political representatives who have run it for the past decades? It says a lot and we are indeed living in the dark ages. We do not have to think about the Kerry babies.

I know there are genuine people who do not want to see this happen again and are ashamed of that shameful dark history. They are worried when they hear that the floodgates will open and that women will want to have abortions every other day of the week because it is a great way not to get pregnant or that women will get pregnant just to get rid of it and will get pills and swallow them. If people do not want to see any of these incidents repeated, they need to vote to repeal the eighth amendment. The obstetricians and gynaecologists who came to the committee gave evidence that the eighth amendment creates a chill factor for the medical profession when it comes to dealing with women. They are afraid of their lives to intervene when there is a heartbeat because of the eighth amendment.

To those who are middle of the road, I ask them to vote to get rid of the amendment. Until they do, we will have a repetition of the X, Y and C cases, Amanda Mellet and others. That has to be stated clearly. The vast majority of people in this country do not wish to see that sort of the society, even though there is an extreme atmosphere around this issue, in particular in the corridors of religion and sometimes in the corridors of power.

I wish to speak to those who want to stop women having bodily autonomy. The Minister, Deputy Harris, made a very good speech. It was very conciliatory but there were some gaping holes in it because he referred to the 1861 Act, which subjected women to penal servitude for life. I understand a life sentence is about seven years. We have an Act which subjects women to a 14 year sentence, but the he forgot to mention it. He also said that he wanted to give out as much information as possible during the course of the referendum. Can we please ensure that all Deputies have a sense of responsibility? If they give out information, they should make sure it is accurate so that we are not told by a Fianna Fáil Deputy that the floodgates will open for abortion on the grounds of Down's syndrome. One cannot get a test for Down's syndrome prior to 12 weeks' gestation without paying €400.

Deputy Coppinger referred to socio-economics. A woman could always have an abortion in this country if she could afford it, by getting on a plane, going away and paying for it. When a woman is poor, an asylum seeker, living direct provision or a worker who cannot take time off and has to scrape pennies together to pay up to €2,000 for an abortion, that is when she is discriminated against. That is one good reason to remove discrimination on the basis of class and discrimination against a cohort of women who do not have the right to enter and leave this country freely.

We also have to have respect for doctors and the medical profession and give them the space to work with women to make decisions about their health. It is the only time in the maternity care system when an individual does not have the right to say what happens to her body. I know many women who go through miscarriages are forced to wait for 20 or 25 hours because a doctor is not allowed to induce them. They have to wait in terrible pain until the miscarriage is seen through to the end. That has left many women I know of, who are my age, distressed for their entire lives and has had an impact on their families.

I wish to make a strong appeal to those who think that protecting the eighth amendment means they are protecting something precious. They are not. All they are protecting is the dark history of this country. They are not going to protect any unborn foetus or potential child by protecting the eighth amendment. We cannot force women to be pregnant when they do not want to be. They will find a way out of it. As has already been said, it is a case of supporting legal abortion or supporting illegal abortion, or supporting the extradition and enforced exile of women from this country to Liverpool, London, Holland and elsewhere. It is forcing young women, in particular, to have abortions on their own, in their own beds, by taking the pill without any medical supervision, and because of the chill factor of the 14 year sentence, they are afraid to tell their parents.

In Northern Ireland three women have been arrested and charged for using or procuring the abortion pill. One was a mother who procured it for her child and the other two women procured it for themselves. That also has to change. I hope that if we get the eighth amendment out of the Constitution and begin to establish legal safe abortion for women in this country, it will cross the Border and the Brexit factor will not stop it from happening. It should have had it long before us under the 1968 Abortion Act in Britain.

I want to say to those who think they are protecting precious life to think about it in this way. There are children living in this country who have been born in this country. One fifth of them live in poverty. Approximately 3,000 are in homeless accommodation today. Molly, who we heard about during the week, is an example of one of the hundreds of children who have not had their rights met. They are born, they are human flesh and they are living. We have not endorsed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We continue to force children into homeless accommodation. If people feel so passionately about life, join us in fighting to change that, get the rights of people with disabilities acknowledged and end homelessness and poverty among lone parents, which is at the highest ever rate.

There are many ways to skin a cat and protect human life. That is what I would like to say to those who think I am some kind of terrorist. I am sure many others have received the literature which called us terrorists for supporting a woman's right to choose. The right to choose, by the way, is to be able to choose to have a child as well. How can a woman choose to have a child with dignity and respect if she has no home, proper health service or job, or no access to IVF treatment when she is finding it difficult to get pregnant? Choice work both ways. Women should be able to choose to control pregnancies and have a child. That is the sort of future society we want to live in.

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