John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Although this is a highly emotive issue and emotions will run high inside and outside this Dáil, it has nothing to do with morals. It is an issue of human rights — women's sexual reproductive rights. This debate over the next couple of days or weeks needs to be evidence-based, but women's health must be made a priority.

An average of ten women travel to the United Kingdom per day to gain access to abortion services, at a rough cost of between €1,000 and €1,500 when they can afford it. Since 1980, 160,000 women or more have gone to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands for an abortion. These are the women who gave Irish addresses but very many more did not. We do not know how many. In the past six years, an average of two women per day, totalling more than 5,000, from Northern Ireland and the South have sought access to medical abortion pills through the website womenontheweb.org.

The guidelines on abortion of the World Health Organization, WHO, state that women's need for abortion cannot be eliminated. Whether they are self-medicating on potentially dangerous drugs, which have severe consequences, or making the lonely journey abroad, Irish women are having abortions. We need to step up to the plate on this. The evidence is decisive. The country is already well ahead of politicians. A RED C poll in October 2017 indicated that 60% of the people polled supported access to abortion, either outright or within specific gestational limits.

While I welcome the recommendations of the committee and applaud its excellent work, I have concerns on a number of fronts. The recommendation that abortion be denied after 12 weeks' gestation in cases of severe foetal impairment is problematic. Many severe foetal abnormalities are not diagnosed until the second trimester of pregnancy. Other European countries have legislation to provide an abortion later in pregnancy in cases of severe fatal foetal impairment. We need to do the same.

The position is similar in cases of rape and incest. It is often the case that a pregnancy is not discovered until beyond 12 weeks of gestation. Women coping with the fact that they have been a victim of a sexual crime should not, if they have become pregnant as a result of that crime, face the added distress of being told they must leave the country to gain access to an abortion service. International human rights guidelines protect women on a number of grounds in later pregnancy. They must be examined closely. The United Nations has repeatedly criticised Ireland's restrictive stance on abortion. Judged according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic and Social and Cultural Rights and, more to the point, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, our stance on abortion has been criticised. The circumstances prevailing in this country are inhumane. Moreover, they are still proof that, at times, the long arm of the Catholic Church attempts to remain mightier than the people.

I brought to the Dáil a number of years ago a number of women who had been brutalised and raped. The former Taoiseach met one of them. After she had been brutalised, bruised and broken, she faced the awful trauma of being told she was pregnant.

Yesterday, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae, who I believe to be a fine and genuine politician, stated there is no shame in being pregnant. There is shame and horror when one is forcibly impregnated. Members need to speak to some of these women. No woman in this country can call herself free if she does not have control of her own body. Making abortion illegal does not stop abortion. Instead, it stops safe abortion. If men could become pregnant, abortion would be as easy as getting Smarties or becoming infected by food poisoning. Members should not cod themselves. Abortion would have been in this country 20 years ago if that was the case. To those who claim they are pro-life, if their wife, mother or daughter was brutalised, raped and traumatised, would they tell them they could not have an abortion and have to carry right through to the nine months? That is inhumane and torturous to women.

We cannot persist with the situation where girls and women are fearful to access health services after an abortion either in another country or by taking pills at home. Amnesty International has stated criminalising a procedure only required by women and girls is discriminating and violates their human rights.

If the Dáil decided to ban abortion for the next 20 years, it will not stop abortion. Instead it will put a barbed wire fence around this country, as was illustrated in a cartoon in The Irish Timesseveral years ago with women using ladders to climb over the fence. We need to get realistic and pragmatic. Banning abortion is not going to stop it. We must deal with the reality of women who have been raped, women dealing with a fatal foetal abnormality or women who are traumatised and cannot carry a child for nine months. They have human rights. The time has come for all of us to stand up to the plate.

Deputy Lisa Chambers spoke about the vile and horrible correspondence Members have already received. This morning I received images sent to me, calling me a murderer and everything else under the sun. This is coming from those who call themselves Christians. On the one hand, they call me a murderer and abuse me. They send me photographs of myself, a foetus, a photograph of the Lord Jesus, the Virgin Mary or some saint. It is about time the men in this Parliament stood up for women's rights. It is time the men in this Parliament stood up for their wives and the wives of others, their mothers and the mothers of the others, their daughters and the daughters of others. We are relying on the men to do it because we do not have enough women in this Parliament to push this over the line.

I urge Members to speak to somebody who has had to bring the foetus of their child in a shoebox back from England after a fatal foetal abnormality. I urge Members to speak to a woman who has been brutalised, her thighs destroyed, her hands broken, her fingernails torn off, forcibly impregnated but told she must carry the child, no matter the consequences. That is how inhuman this society appears to be. We are relying on decent ordinary people in the Dáil to put morals and religion aside and think of women who are traumatised.

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