Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday marked International Women's Day. I was one of thousands who joined with our sisters to celebrate, support and show solidarity to women not only in Ireland but across the world. The atmosphere on yesterday's march was electric and was probably the best International Women's Day march I have ever been on in Dublin. The main theme was repealing the eighth amendment. Hopefully next year, we will celebrate its removal from the Constitution. The vast majority of those who took part in that march never had a vote in Ireland's draconian abortion laws. Young people, particularly, are clamouring for change. They are not prepared to allow the 35 years of fundamentalism by the State and the Catholic Church to define their future. Today we are one step closer to trusting the people of this country and for women to decide on their bodily autonomy.

What it comes down to is that people who do not want to see abortion in this country do not trust women. It is about moral control and the institutions which had control over everyone's lives, and especially women, losing that control. Abortion is a reality in Ireland. Twelve women a day travel for a termination, and in my own constituency of Dublin Mid-West two women each week, more than 100 each year, travel abroad for terminations. This Bill does not seek to make abortions compulsory, but is about decriminalising abortion in this State and, more importantly, decriminalising women for making that choice. These women are not criminals. They have gone on this journey to Britain or elsewhere feeling as though they have been criminalised by the State and the church. It is about supporting those women who have made that deeply personal decision, medically and legally. Who has the right to judge them? I do not nor do Members here, the State and particularly not the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has a nerve to judge women in this country considering its particularly hideous history here. They are hypocrites. People power and the testimony of individual women have brought us to this juncture, not politicians, the church or the State.

Only those aged 53 years or over had the chance to vote on this issue in 1983. I did not have a vote. The Minister for Health did not have one. It has been 35 years of hurt, not for us but for the women who have never had a choice. That is a shameful length of time to elapse. It is time to right the terrible wrong in this country and wipe away the past to give people, especially women, in this country a future and a choice.

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