Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I was born in 1983 in the country of the Magdalen laundries, the Kerry Babies case, the case of Ann Lovett and many other horrors. It has been said in the debate that the past is another country, and this is true in some very important respects, most importantly in respect of people's attitudes to these issues. However, in legal terms, that country continues today with the eighth amendment, which reflected and codified that oppression of women which was widespread and is still in our Constitution today. It is still in our Constitution because we have had a political establishment tied to the Catholic Church and very reactionary forces, hypocritically availing of the existence of an English solution, which was absolutely unwilling to do anything to deal with the reality of abortion in this country. That was not just the case in 1983 or throughout the 1980s; it was the case throughout the 1990s, in the 2000s and even a few years ago here, when we and others introduced repeal bills and were met by a wall of opposition and told there was no appetite for change on this issue.

What has changed that now there is very positively a clear majority in the Dáil for repeal? What has changed that the anti-choice voices are now in a relatively small minority in the Dáil, reflected in the fact that only eight Fianna Fáil members could be summoned to their meeting to save the eighth? The crucial thing is the movement that has taken place and which exploded, rightfully, in anger at the death of Savita Halappanavar and repeatedly brought tens of thousands onto the streets in protests that doubled in size yearly. The publicising of the availability of the abortion pills by For Reproductive Rights, Against Oppression, Sexism and Austerity, ROSA, and Women on Web illustrated that abortion was not just being exported, but was also happening in Ireland. With the opening of a discussion in society because of that movement and because of the horrific cases such as that of Savita Halappanavar, public opinion changed extremely rapidly, and young people have led the way in this regard. For example, the recent RED C poll illustrates that 79% of 18 to 24 year olds and 73% of 25 to 34 year olds support abortion on request up to 12 weeks; 67% of people in Dublin across all age brackets support it, but a majority in every area of the country supports it. That shift in public opinion was then reflected in the Citizens' Assembly and its outcome, which was entirely unexpected from the point of view of the establishment. What we have seen in the past week, thankfully, is a dramatic catch-up on the part of politicians in the face of the change that has taken place outside of this House.

It is all those who have fought for abortion rights - those who marched, those who publicised the availability of abortion pills, those who proudly displayed the repeal slogan on jumpers, bags and badges - who have got us this far.

There is a crucial lesson here in terms of winning the referendum itself. It is those forces that got us this far and it is those forces that will win the referendum, as opposed to any establishment politicians. These movements have to lead the referendum campaign and get out there to discuss with people the reality of the conditions facing women, to win the arguments, to win the referendum and to win it by as large a margin as is possible.

There has been a lot of discussion about the need for a respectful debate, and I agree with the need for a respectful debate. The basis of such a respectful debate has to be respect for scientific facts. Those forces of the anti-choice campaign which have their origins in the same forces of religious fundamentalism that fought for, and managed to get inserted, the eighth amendment in the first place, are clearly honing their arguments. They have focus groups and so on. The arguments they have used up to now are not arguments based on scientific facts. They are based on deliberate misinformation. I, and I am sure many other people, have been getting ads on my Facebook feed from LoveBoth, telling me 5,000 lives a year are saved by the eighth amendment and comparing it to other laws which save lives. It is complete nonsense on every possible level. If it were true in the sense they mean it is true, it would mean there have been 5,000 forced pregnancies every year since 1983. That would not be something to celebrate, but it is not true even in the sense they mean it. Ireland's abortion rate is comparable to other countries where abortion is legal. Irish women just have to travel or take illegal but safe abortion pills. As has been mentioned, the Netherlands, which has pro-choice laws, has one of the lowest abortion rates in the world. This brings us to a core point, that abortion is a reality and one can have legal or illegal abortion, or one is in favour of forced pregnancies.

The second key argument the anti-choice campaign will use, which was highlighted very well and deconstructed by Fintan O'Toole yesterday in The Irish Times, is abusing the issue of Down’s syndrome, with misinformation such as that 90% of babies diagnosed with Down's syndrome in Britain are aborted. It is deliberate misinformation because it leaves out the close to 40% of women who choose not to be screened for Down's syndrome. Incredibly, because of misinformation raised at the Oireachtas committee, the Danish ambassador was forced to write this sentence: "It should be noted that it is not the policy of the Danish health authorities to eradicate Down’s syndrome." Of course it is not.

The argument is also utterly hypocritical because many of these people who want to judge women who make personal decisions have voted for or supported the cuts in services for children with disabilities, which means children are on waiting lists for years for access to basic services. We should talk about real choice, which means providing for proper public services, including for children with disabilities.

Those on that side of the argument present their arguments in this way because they think they can work. They also do so because they know that their fundamental views on which the arguments are based are not now widely shared in society. At the root of the viewpoint of those elements such as the Iona Institute and LoveBoth is a religious fundamentalist view. We often hear references from that side that religion has nothing to do with it, but the speeches of those in this House against repeal are very revealing. Invariably they reference God and religion. I have nothing against that, and people have every right to hold religious views and every right to structure and organise their lives in line with those religious beliefs, but they do not have a right to impose those views on others or to have those views reflected in the Constitution of our State and then imposed on all.

This is linked to the issue of conscience that often comes up in this debate. I have to say I find it a bit frustrating that we have all these Deputies, largely men, talking about struggling with their consciences on this issue. A man does not have to struggle with his conscience on this issue. He will never have to make a decision about having an abortion. What it is saying is that his personal opinion, whatever outcome he comes to in terms of his conscience, should have control over other people's bodies. That is linked to a view, perhaps unconsciously or subconsciously held, of women as lesser or as property. This was summed up quite horrifically by the Fianna Fáil Deputy quoted in The Sunday Business Post, saying, "What farmer would abort a calf? You’d always give it a chance to live." I do not presume the Deputy meant any offence, but it is mind-boggling that anyone would say such a thing. Whoever that is is literally comparing a woman to a cow, a human being to livestock. I want to say to that Deputy that those views are utterly out of touch with what people, across age brackets and geography and including men, think. If we look at the opinion poll, men of all age groups in the RED C poll support the right of women to access abortion on request, at least up to 12 weeks. The idea of men telling women what to do or controlling women's bodies is over. In that sense, the movement for repeal here is part of a global movement including #MeToo and #TimesUp.

I want to issue a warning to the Government. Every day that passes before we repeal the eighth amendment and legislate for abortion in this country, ten women are forced to travel to access abortion and five women take abortion pills in Ireland. These women cannot wait. There is a danger the Government is seeking to revisit, and potentially come up with a different conclusion, an issue that was considered extensively by the Oireachtas committee which decided to recommend repeal simpliciter. The Government, together with the Attorney General, does not need to reinvent the wheel. The Citizens' Assembly with its proposal was seeking to direct the Dáil to act to ensure that abortion rights were actually delivered and to immunise any abortion legislation from potential challenge. It had little time to debate the legal options and the advice it received was not fully rounded. The Oireachtas committee, on the other hand, weighed and heard testimony from three legal experts and had its own legal adviser who outlined six possible options. Eventually, the committee decided that legal certainty is not guaranteed with any option but that the potential for a legal challenge post repeal, on the basis of implied rights of the unborn, was outweighed by the fact that the people would have spoken quite clearly in the course of the referendum and that the dangers of inserting such a clause outweighed the benefit. The dangers are that abortion legislation could be immunised from any potential challenge, even from women who might be victims of it, and that it could be seen by the electorate as setting a dangerous precedent for the separation of powers. The Government would be wise to proceed with simple repeal, as weighed up over months by the committee. If we complicate it by inserting a wording, it opens up a hornets' nest, and potentially could cause a significant and completely unnecessary delay.

I also want to say to those who have said they will not vote for legislation for access to abortion, regardless of the result of the referendum and all parties here, that the debate we are entering into on the referendum is clearly not just a debate about the repeal of the eighth amendment from the Constitution. It will also be about the recommendations of the Oireachtas committee, including 12 weeks' access on request. No party should stand in the way of that.

It is young people who have led the way on this. They will simply not stand any more for a society that oppresses women and that limits personal freedom. They will struggle for this human rights, civil rights and democratic rights issue of the right of a woman to control her own body. They will struggle beyond this referendum to ensure this exists and they will not just leave it there. They will demand sex education in schools that actually informs people about their bodies and which is LGBTQ positive, as opposed to the situation that exists at present, and which recognises, as Alexandra Kollontai wrote, that "sexuality is a human instinct as natural as thirst or hunger". This means an end to church control of our schools. They will similarly struggle for a properly funded secular health care system and separation of church and State. They will struggle for decent public services for people to have decent standards of living, decent wages and decent access to housing, all of the things that are necessary to provide people with real choice.

I will finish with an appropriate quote from the German-Polish revolutionary socialist, Rosa Luxemburg.

She wrote:

When wide circles of society are seized by a sense of injustice ... it is always a sure sign that far-reaching shifts have taken place in the economic basis of society, and that the existing order of things has already come into contradiction with the ongoing process of development. The present powerful movement of millions of proletarian women who feel their political disenfranchisement to be a crying injustice is just such an unmistakable sign that the social foundations of the existing state are already rotten and that its days are numbered.

The days of the backward, Catholic Church-dominated, women-oppressing State of 1983 - in reality, the counter-revolutionary state of 1922 - are numbered.

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