Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This is an enormously difficult topic. There are many difficult, tragic situations facing mothers, fathers and children every day that cause enormous stress and strain in their lives. Our approach to these families, our friends, relations or neighbours should be founded on compassion. We need to ensure that every support necessary is found to help these families.

I have colleagues who are pro-choice and while I disagree with them fundamentally on this issue, I know that for the majority of them their perspective is motivated by a desire to help in massively difficult situations.

My party, Sinn Féin, believes that the eighth amendment should be repealed and that abortion should be made available in certain circumstances where there is life-limiting disability, rape, incest and a threat to the mother's life and health. I have a different view than my party's on this issue. Over 100 years ago, through the Proclamation, republicans from around the country set forth a progressive view of an new independent Ireland and at the heart of that Proclamation was the objective to cherish all the children of the nation equally. This objective is also at the heart of my viewpoint.

I believe that the debate on the eighth amendment is the most important human rights debate of our generation. In the upcoming referendum, each citizen is being asked an extremely serious question, one that will radically change the nature of who we are as a people and our core values. First, the life of the mother in all cases must be protected. On Committee Stage of the abortion Bill in 2013, I asked the masters of the maternity hospitals who were present if they were aware of any mother who lost her life due to the eighth amendment. They all said "No". I would not support any law, be it in the Constitution or anywhere else, that did not guarantee the life of the mother.

It is important also to note when we discuss this issue that Ireland has one of the best records on maternal mortality in the world, better than many countries where abortion is provided. For me, the unborn child is a living individual human being. She is the weakest and most vulnerable of all human life. She has no voice, but currently within the Constitution she is protected by the eighth amendment. Human life is the most valuable thing we have. Without it, you, me or the unborn child has absolutely nothing. What is at stake in the forthcoming referendum is the existence, the lives and the potentials of tens of thousands of individuals for the next 50 years.

Every human being, by definition, should be entitled to human rights. Human rights, by definition, are universal. If a human right is withdrawn from a sector of humanity, it is no longer a human right but it is a sectoral right. In Britain, one in five pregnancies end in abortion and since abortion was legalised in Britain, there have been nearly 9 million abortions. It is estimated that already this year, internationally there have been 2 million abortions. To most people in Ireland, these are frightening figures.

Ireland's story is radically different. First, the abortion rate in Ireland, even if we take into consideration the abortion pill, is at a 30-year low. One in 20 pregnancies in Ireland end in abortion. In Britain, it is four in 20 so if we bring the British culture and the British law into this country, three out of 20 pregnancies that would reach full term here would no longer reach full term. Over generations, that is hundreds of thousands of lives saved by the eighth amendment.

One of the major difficulties I have with abortion is how it affects minorities. If someone is from a minority sector of society they are far more likely to be negatively affected by abortion. Last year, I met with Karen Gaffney. Karen has a disability and she spoke eloquently about her real fear that people with her condition would almost be, in her words, eradicated before birth. Today I spoke with Anne Traynor, a mother of a child with a disability. She told me her fears with regard to the upcoming referendum and what it would mean for children like her own.

Around the world there are organisations such as Don't Screen Us Out. We should think about that for a second. These are people with disabilities setting up organisations to ask us not to screen them out of society. That is an incredible thing that will happen in our generation. In countries that have removed the right to life there are shocking rates of abortion among people with disabilities. In some cases, 90% of children who are diagnosed with a disability while in the womb are aborted. It is expected in some of these countries that there would be no children born with these certain disabilities in the next 20 years. Shockingly, in the Netherlands, the Minister for health was asked a question and she responded by stating that if freedom of choice results in a situation that nearly no children with disabilities are being born, society should accept that. Obviously, for the individual child concerned, the result is catastrophic but societies will be radically poorer if we lose our rich diversity of humanity.

Life-limiting disability is a heartbreaking diagnosis for any parent to get. Most unborn children who receive that diagnosis lose their lives either before birth or afterwards, but there are exceptions to that. One was mentioned earlier. I had the chance to meet a wonderful girl called Kathleen Rose Harkin who has trisomy 13. Diagnosed in the womb, her condition would be described as a foetal fatal abnormality, yet she is ten years old today. I believe that Kathleen Rose Harkin should have an equal right to life as everybody sitting in this Chamber today. I have asked doctors if it is possible for the doctor to declare that an unborn child would not make it through the birth and live outside of the womb, and they all said "No".

In the Citizens' Assembly we saw something startling. The assembly members' decided that depending on whether one was able bodied or, in their words, had a non-fatal foetal abnormality or had a fatal foetal abnormality, one would have a different time limit with regard to abortion. They defined three different categories of human beings with three different legal rights to life. That is a polar opposite of what equality means.

The issue of gender select abortion has not been discussed properly in this debate. It is estimated that 100 million women are missing in the world due to gender selection abortion or infanticide. In countries such as China, Britain and the United States, some parents, for economic, social or cultural reasons, seek sons and therefore abort their unborn baby girls. Abortion also differentiates against minorities. More African American babies are aborted in New York city than are born in New York city. In the United States, if someone is from an ethnic minority they are far more likely to be aborted.

In a country which shouts that black lives matter, their population is being seriously skewed by the number of abortions in that community.

Abortion also discriminates against the poor. In the USA an unborn child is far more likely to be aborted in a a poor family than in a rich family. Some 75% of unborn children aborted in the United States are to mothers from poor or low-income backgrounds. If the Government really seeks to help women, targeted funding to lift families out of poverty, child care services and a decent living wage for working mothers are pivotal.

The abortion debate in Ireland focuses only on the law, which is a massive mistake. In all the talk about choice we are ignoring the economic factors which make so many women believe they do not have a choice both here and elsewhere. I strongly believe life should not just be for the rich, the fortunate, the planned or the perfect. We all live under the same sky and are responsible for each other, no matter how frail, small and vulnerable we are. Surely, we must fight to have a society which leaves no child or mother behind.

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