Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Last week in this country we experienced an act of God. I refer to Storm Emma. We had four days of bitter ice, cold and snow. Who did that weather and that act of God leave out in the cold, both figuratively and literally? Women again, as it is always. Between 36 and 48 women either had to cancel expensive flights, hotel rooms and appointments in the UK or reschedule them because of an act of God. A further 12 to 15 women were waiting by the door to get illegal pills, probably fretting about whether the postman would be able to battle the elements and deliver them.

Of those women sitting in the waiting rooms of England now, many will have been tipped across the safe threshold for taking tablets through no fault of their own but due to an act of God. I refer to weather and factors beyond their control. How do we in this House feel about that? Today, I pay tribute to the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, for the leadership, compassion, maturity and understanding he has shown in regard to the eighth amendment. I also thank Deputy Kelleher for his considered contribution to the Chamber this morning.

I was struck last night by a tweet I read from a woman called Aoife. She that it was honestly no wonder that one of Ireland's mythological creatures is a woman shrieking in endless rage and sorrow. It brought me back to childhood and tales of banshees in primary school. I thought about Pádraig Pearse's poem Mise Éire:

Mise éire:

Sine mé ná an Chailleach Bhéarra

Mór mo ghlóir:

Mé a rug Cú Chulainn cróga.

Mór mo náir:

Mo chlann féin a dhíol a máthair.

Ireland has always been painted as female, as our mother, our homeland and the cradle in which we were reared and nurtured. I refer to Ireland and the suffering and labour of a gender personified and immortalised in art and literature as confined into the shape and borders of a country. I refer to Irish women confined and contained within that country.

In respect of the utter hypocrisy of the thirteenth amendment, why did we need it? Why did we need to enshrine the right to travel? Travel for what? Travel with what intent and to what end? I asked a witness who favoured retaining the eighth amendment at the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution if he would support retaining the thirteenth amendment. He bluntly replied with one word: "No". This man, who commands huge respect among people who want to keep the eighth amendment, said on the record that he does not want to repeal the right to travel. The people to whom he is aligned and supports must therefore want the status quoto remain. I refer to the people who claim to love both. Those people who state falsehoods about foetal development and try to bamboozle people with billboards and posters of computer-generated impressions of what the unborn human might look like. Now, that witness was not an expert on gynaecology, although he is an eminent legal mind who campaigned fiercely for the eighth amendment to be introduced in 1983. Then we asked Dr. Peter Boylan, when he appeared before the joint committee, a reasonable question. Will there be far more abortions if we repeal the eighth amendment? Dr. Boylan, the former master of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, who himself has delivered more than 6,000 babies and is one of Ireland's respected consultant obstetricians and gynaecologists, said it was documented that in countries where abortion is banned the rate of women dying remains high. He said approximately 70,000 women die each year from complications relating to unsafe abortions.

The joint committee heard testimony from Professor Abigail Aiken that Irish women today are attempting self-abortions with potentially fatal consequences. It is equally well documented, she said, that countries with liberal laws and easy access to contraception have lower rates of abortion than those with restrictive laws. Women in Ireland with financial resources have access to termination of pregnancy, primarily in the UK. However, women who are poor, in the care of the State or women who are refugees do not have such access. The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution are of no assistance to these poor women and refugees. Without access to abortion in the UK, it is inevitable that Ireland would have an epidemic of illegal abortions and a massive increase in maternal mortality. That is dead women.

If Ireland were to enact legislation in line with the EU consensus, including termination without restriction up to ten weeks, our law would be among the most conservative in Europe. However, it would deal with the vast majority of circumstances in which women currently access services outside the State. The forthcoming referendum on the eighth amendment should put a simple binary question, the experts said, to the electorate. I refer to being for or against repeal. Legislation is the responsibility of the Oireachtas not the people. On repeal of the eighth amendment, Irish law on termination of pregnancy would continue to be governed by the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act. There would be no legislative vacuum pending further legislation.

In the meantime, women in Ireland will continue to access services in the UK or elsewhere in Europe or to access abortion pills illegally, as they are doing today. All of the international evidence is that in countries where there is a liberal law or where they change from a restrictive to a more liberal law, the rate of termination falls. This must be tied in, however, with improved health, contraception and sexual health education and cannot be looked at in isolation. That is what the experts said and that is what really shook so many of us in the Oireachtas committee. We at the committee had been hearing anecdotal suggestions that floodgates would open, that Irish abortion rates would rocket, that women would go wild altogether with abandon and would use abortion as contraception but experts at the coal face of our health service dispelled all of those myths. How could we be sure though? We asked the eminent head of obstetrics and gynaecology in St. George's Hospital, Tooting in London, who also happens to be president of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, who said that the experience in France, Italy and Turkey is that once termination of pregnancy is legalised, the abortion rate comes down. The main reason for that is that it is combined, as Dr. Boylan mentioned, with good post-abortion contraception. It is a very clear distinction that it comes down without any difficulty. Second, because medical termination of pregnancy is available, things are getting safer. The WHO document shows that the chance of a mother dying during a termination in the first trimester is 0.1 per 100,000, which is minimal. As the gestation period increases, so too do the complications and risks. Illegal abortion comes to the fore when women are in the later period of gestation and run into difficulties. Legalisation of abortion brings the termination rates down. That is the experience, not just in one country, but in a number of countries including South Africa. Is that not interesting?

People are being told that repealing the eighth amendment will have a catastrophic effect on women's health. That is simply not true and not repealing it is far more dangerous. People are being told that repealing the eighth amendment will lead to more Irish women having abortions but all the evidence would suggest that this is not true either. The Oireachtas committee asked Ms Leah Hoctor, the regional director for Europe of the Center for Reproductive Rights to outline the norms in a European context, including whether the countries that introduced a 12-week gestational limit increased that later. I thank Deputy Billy Kelleher for reading into the record of the House this morning the details of term limits in a European context. Ms Hoctor said:

[I]t is my understanding the limit was decided in the law reform process and I do not believe we have seen change in a European country. A country that has set a ten or 12-week limit on request or a later limit has not shifted. Other requirements and facets of the law have changed and developed over time. The most common limit is 12 weeks. Although these countries' laws were adopted at a time when medical abortion, the abortion pill, was not available, it is interesting that the ten to 12-week period in place in their laws is the time period within which medical abortion is safe and now available. Even though that was not the case at the time, it is interesting to see that the time period they set also lines up with the time period for medical abortion being safe, as stated by the WHO.

In that context I find it remarkable that the campaigners to retain the eighth amendment are so grievously misrepresenting the facts to the public. Through a combination of online, mobile and billboard advertising, they are putting falsehoods into the ether. Their philosophy seems to be that if one cannot convince them, confuse them and their fake fact floodgates are bursting open across the country as we speak. They have the privilege of free speech, as we all do but when their free speech serves their own ends and not the people, then we have to stand up and say, "That is not true and is deliberately designed to cause pain".

While we are on the subject of privilege, as I said on Wednesday during the debate on mother and baby homes, it is important that Members of this House, past and present, pause on occasion and check their privilege. I am not talking about the privilege and honour that comes from serving as a Deputy. I am talking about the privilege that so many of us take for granted and can remain utterly blind to, that is, the privilege of being born healthy and able bodied to parents who either raised us themselves or gave us the opportunity to be raised by others; the privilege of being wanted, loved, fed and reared in a safe and secure home, of being valued in a society that was practically designed for us to participate in as an equal, with the economic safety net of family and friends and with every opportunity available to us to succeed and grow. We must all remember to check our privilege from time to time. Some of us may not notice the huge headstart afforded to us by virtue of where, when and to whom we were born.

My mother is 70 now and we had a party to celebrate her birthday at the end of January. I talked about her during Wednesday's debate too. She often talks to us about the girls in rural Ireland who had their babies at home and if they did not survive, they were buried at the end of gardens under apple trees. The babies that survived home births to young girls were treated totally differently to other children, were seen as lesser and were made to know it too. There was little sign even then of a willingness to love both, as the girls were judged too. That sexual apartheid was supported by laws and encouraged in an attempt to discipline communities.

My mother is not an outlier of her generation. She has many friends her own age with similar stories. They tell tales of only-daughters impregnated against their will in order to guarantee inheritance of a father's farm and of teenage girls cycling rattling bikes down dark, narrow roads who were set upon by men. Those men never paid any price for their crimes while the girls paid dearly. People might see this as washing our dirty linen in public but I would ask them to think about those 35,000 women who washed our dirty linen in private. People might resent hearing these stories and might deny that these things happened but these stories are true and these things did happen. We must all accept and not deny what is happening. Already the stains of these grave sins against our women are on all our souls. Those who support retaining the eighth amendment must surely believe that the stains of the many legal and illegal Irish abortions taking place are on our souls too. They must therefore welcome what must be news to them today, namely that repealing the eighth amendment will lead to fewer abortions and less staining on their souls in the long run. The longer the status quoremains, the harder it will be for us to launder the stains out and we do not have 35,000 women trapped in a barren prison anymore to do our laundry for us. That privilege is all ours.

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