Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2018. I am strongly in favour of repeal of the eighth amendment. I recently met our local group in Limerick, Repeal LK, of which I have become a member. I look forward to working with it and other elected representatives in Limerick to campaign to ensure the eighth amendment is removed from the Constitution. The amendment should never have been inserted into the Constitution in 1983. It has imposed untold misery on thousands of women who have had to travel abroad for a termination. It has denied women the right to receive the best health care to meet their individual needs and tied the hands of medical professionals here. Women who were the victims of rape were abandoned by the country in their time of most need and forced to catch a flight to seek treatment elsewhere. The amendment has resulted in women buying abortion pills online and taking them in their homes with no medical advice or supervision, with the physical and psychological impact it brings. Unfortunately, the situation the amendment has created in the State has resulted in the deaths of women. Abortions are happening in Ireland and the eighth amendment has never changed this. All it has done is export an issue with which we refused to deal and force women and girls to take abortion pills on their own with no medical advice or assistance. As a society, we can no longer continue to keep our heads in the sand and pretend that we live in some utopian society that is not affected by the issue. It has taken far too long for it to come back for public vote and now is the time for change. I hope the generations of people, including me, who have never had a say on the eighth amendment will take the opportunity to ensure we will vote for change and ensure the outdated status quowill not be maintained.

The issue is clearly divisive and both sides of the debate hold strong beliefs on the matter. However, whatever one's view or persuasion, one thing for sure is that citizens of the country deserve to have a vote on the issue. That is without question. We live in a democracy and a massive section of society has never had an opportunity to vote on the issue, one which has very wide-ranging consequences in a variety of situations. Regardless of one's personal opinion on the subject, it would be unconscionable to try to block the citizens of Ireland from having a say on the issue in a referendum.

Anyone who listened to the tragic story of "Ciara" on "Morning Ireland" today would have been absolutely heartbroken. She and her husband received the devastating news that their much-wanted child would be incompatible with life outside the womb. They were informed that, owing to the additional threats to her health, the treatment was the immediate evacuation of the foetus. She then asked her doctors why it could not happen immediately and was informed that, despite the threat to her health, nothing could be done for her in this state owing to the eighth amendment. The devastating news that her child would be incompatible with life outside the womb was compounded by being forced to travel to Liverpool for treatment. She vividly described tragic scenarios about the journey such as regretting not being able to have her mother with her and the harrowing ordeal of a ten-hour journey home by boat carrying her baby in a coffin and trying to keep her baby cold with ice packs. As they exited the port, the customs officer looked at them and the small white coffin and waved them though as they had seen it too many times. It was devastating to hear her story. It makes one think of all of the other women and their untold stories who have had to suffer this terrible ordeal.

The eighth amendment needs to go. We need to trust women. I will be campaigning for the repeal of the eighth amendment and hope we can have a respectful and constructive debate on the issue. I commend everybody who took part in the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. They were impressive and excellent and their contributions were really good. I echo Deputy Kathleen Funchion's comment that people should try to read some of the transcripts of the debates at the committee. I learned an awful lot. I thought I was educated on the issue until I started to watch the proceedings of the committee. I encourage people to watch them. They should not read the fake news on social media, including Twitter, but the expert advice given to the committee by Ireland's leading medical professionals and trust women on the issue.

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