Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to finally get an opportunity to speak on the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2018. This is incredibly important legislation that will finally give a whole generation of people the opportunity to have their say on the eighth amendment and Ireland's effective constitutional ban on abortion.

The repeal of the eighth amendment is necessary in order to ensure that Irish women have access to proper and appropriate health care. The eighth amendment should never have been placed in the Constitution. It was a mistake and bitter experience over decades demonstrates that. I have spoken about that on a number of occasions and I have referenced my parents and people like them who campaigned against the insertion of the eighth amendment into the Constitution in 1983. At the time people warned what would happen. They were not fortune tellers and they did not have crystal balls but they were people who listened to doctors and women and they could see what would happen. History shows us that they were right and that we need to repeal the eighth amendment.

We need only ask the masters of the maternity hospitals - the men and women we trust to look after our daughters and friends. They have told us, clearly, in a way one could not misunderstand or misinterpret, that the eighth amendment is an impediment to them in doing their job. Dr. Rhona Mahony, master of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, said it is clear that the eighth amendment does not protect the best interests of mothers or babies as a result of the chill factor it imposes in respect of what medics can do, whether in routine or emergency situations.

As has been highlighted at the Citizens’ Assembly and in other fora, the criminalisation of abortion causes a chilling factor for women seeking medical care, as well as for health care staff providing such care. The criminal law plays a major role in creating a chilling factor for women in getting post-abortion care. Women are less likely to present at their doctors after an abortion in Ireland, which would be carried out illegally, or a legal abortion overseas. That puts them in distinct danger in even getting aftercare.

The eighth amendment was never about morals or ethics: it was about the control of women. It finds its genesis in a sexist and conservative State with sexist and conservative social values which dominated society for decades. The core driver of such conservatism and sexism was a church obsessed with control and the pursuit of its warped vision of what it believed to be a moral society.

The insertion of the eighth amendment into the Constitution in 1983 was the collective reach of ultra conservative elements within the State into an area of health policy in order to control women and their bodies. The fight for the removal of the eighth amendment is a fight to give women back control of their bodies and to restore the termination of a pregnancy to area of medicine where it is between a woman and her doctor and not a matter of national social policy. Women should be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies and medical needs.

The referendum provides us with a historic opportunity to ensure finally that compassion and trust in women prevail. We have heard the evidence from experts. We have heard indisputable facts. We have heard the evidence from the experts on why they believe the eighth amendment must go. That evidence is available. We heard it at the committee and at the Citizens' Assembly. It is freely available and I encourage everybody to acquaint themselves with the facts in advance of this referendum vote. It does not suit the narrative put forward by the anti-abortion lobby, which is reminiscent perhaps of what was being said in 1983, but we have moved on. Just because the facts do not suit their agenda does not mean we should not discuss those facts.

It is not lost on anyone that even at the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution there were representatives who appeared before it and gave misleading claims. I had to write to the Icelandic and Danish Governments to ensure they could defend themselves against the misinformation put forward at the committee by some of the representatives. I had to invite them to put facts on the record and not misinformation.

It is little wonder, therefore, that the anti-choice side have now hired a company with close ties to Cambridge Analytica. For anyone who does not know, Cambridge Analytica is a company which combines data mining and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process. It has been accused of harvesting and using the personal data of millions of Facebook users and is under suspicion as to whether that data was used to influence the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election or the Brexit referendum.

As The TimesIreland edition reported, Thomas Borwick, who it is reported used to work for Cambridge Analytica but who set up his own company Kanto, has been hired by an Irish anti-abortion group. This is who the anti-abortion and anti-choice groups which will be party to the debate on this referendum have turned to in order to maintain the status quo. They are organisations which do not deal in facts, but which no doubt help to disseminate fake news and propaganda. The Data Protection Commissioner has every reason to be worried and to start investigating to make sure that the arrival of Kanto to this State to work with one side in the referendum debate means that data protection laws could be breached. I believe the Data Protection Commissioner should investigate this matter.

Similarly, the latest campaign by the anti-abortion side carried advertisements with a man who claimed to be a scrub nurse who spent years assisting in operating theatres when abortions were being carried out. The only problem with this was that it was completely fake. The man was not a scrub nurse but was a hospital porter for eighth months and he has been found out for having falsified a qualification document. That is what we will be up against. Those are the opponents of women’s rights and the opponents of the repeal movement.

Women have fought and continue to fight for equality. We do not want to go back into the boxes in which the patriarchy tried to put us in 1983 and the decades thereafter. We want the eighth amendment repealed and we want legislation to allow compassionate access to abortion in this State. We cannot say Irish women do not have abortions. They do. We all know somebody who has been affected by it. Irish women have abortions every day. With the advent of the abortion pill we cannot even say, as we did years ago, that they have abortions every day but they just do not have them here. They do have them here, every day, and we cannot deny that. To continue to deny that is to continue to perpetuate the kind of place Ireland was in 1983 and we have moved on.

I use this opportunity to call on the leaders of all other parties to do what their job title suggests and provide leadership on this issue. The women of Ireland will not thank us if we do not provide leadership. They will not thank us if we use this referendum to score political points.

On days like this and when we debate the eighth amendment we should remember Ann Lovett, Sheila Hodgers, Joanne Hayes and all those women who have been served so horrendously by the State. For them, our daughters and our granddaughters, we can and must repeal the eighth amendment.

That is why I am very proud to be a member and a supporter of the group Together for Yes. It is a civil society group that will be launched on Thursday and it is calling for a "Yes" vote in the referendum - "Yes" to repeal the eighth amendment. The group is made up of supporters from all walks of life. The one thing that unifies us is that we want to acknowledge that this is a modern State. We want the State and its laws to reflect that. We do not want to live in the Ireland of 1983.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Sheila Hodgers. Sheila was a friend of my mother and I have spoken about her on a number of occasions. She died 34 years ago yesterday and her baby died two days later. Sheila was treated horrendously by this State. She was let down. Her two beautiful daughters were left without a Mammy. Her husband was left without his wife and, as I said, her baby died.

That was Ireland in 1983. That was the State we lived in in 1983, and it was because of women like Sheila that women like my mother got out and campaigned against the insertion of the eighth amendment into the Constitution. They lost, not because they were wrong. They were not wrong. We see now that they were right. We have an alphabet soup of missed deeds. We have Savita Halappanavar and all the women who have been so badly let down by this State. We know that people like my mother were right in 1983. They lost because they were up against powerful vested interests, groups with deep pockets intent on ensuring that women and anyone with a progressive mind did not have a voice in the State at the time. It was absolutely wrong.

I have said this previously and I will echo what has been said by other Deputies. This can and should be a respectful debate. People are entitled to their own opinions and views. Within my party we have debated this at our Ard-Fheis and at many ard-fheiseanna. As recently as yesterday and on the anniversary of Sheila's death, our ard comhairle announced that it will put forward a motion to the next Ard-Fheis in June which makes clear the direction of travel for the party, but it will be done in conjunction with and guided by our members and we will respect, as we always do, the decision of our members.

This motion reasserts that abortion should be available where a woman's life and health or mental health is at risk and in cases of fatal foetal abnormality.

It supports the joint committee's findings that it is not possible to legislate for abortion in the case of rape in a compassionate way. It recognises that Irish women already access abortion services every day in other countries or through abortion pills purchased online and accepts that abortion without specific indications should be available through a general practitioner led service in a clinical context, as determined by law and licensing practice for a limited gestational period. The motion does not provide for abortion on demand or the opening of the floodgates but offers a proportionate response. I support it wholeheartedly and I will campaign for it in my party.

It is important that we trust women and do not go back to 1983. We must consider what has occurred as a direct result of the eighth amendment. We must decide to trust women, do the right thing and look to the new generation of young women, which includes my daughter. We should look to those who did not have a say in the referendum of 1983. While I have spoken about that referendum many times, I did not have a vote at the time because I was only a child, although I remember the campaign was bitter and divisive. The forthcoming campaign should not be bitter or divisive because it will be characterised by a fact-based discussion. We will be led by doctors and medical professionals, not clerics or those who seek to moralise.

Irish women have always had to fight for rights. They fought for the right to vote and to access contraception and the removal of the eighth amendment is our next fight. We often look back and speak about the revolutionaries of the past. Two weeks ago, when I looked out at the rally for repeal of the eighth amendment, I saw a large number of young, unmanageable revolutionaries wearing black jumpers inscribed with the word "Repeal". These young women and men will make history of their own. We owe it to Sheila Hodgers, Ann Lovett and Joanne Hayes to say to these young women that we do not want to go back to 1983 but instead trust women and put their health care in their hands and the hands of doctors. Women's health care should not be in the Constitution. We have an opportunity to remove the eighth amendment from the Constitution and do right for a new generation of young women.

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