Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin believes the eighth amendment should be repealed and that abortion services should be made available in certain cases such as where there is a life-limiting disability, in cases of rape and incest and where there is a threat to the health of the mother. I thank my party for giving me the opportunity to speak to the Bill, despite the fact that I hold a different view from that of my party. Respectful debate on the issue is a threat to nobody and should be encouraged. I believe strongly that we need to fight for every single living human being and that our yardstick is that no mother or child should be left behind by the State. Fine Gael is not a good place in which to be if one is a young mother or a child. The feminisation of poverty accelerated under Fine Gael austerity Governments in the past few years. Tonight 3,267 children sleep in emergency accommodation; dozens of children lie on trolleys daily in overcrowded hospitals; 52,257 children are on hospital waiting lists, while 8,500 children are waiting to see medical specialists. What does this say about a particular Government that at a time when hundreds of thousands of children are living in crisis among us, the next seven months of its time will be consumed by deleting the right to life of the unborn child?

The Taoiseach states he is pro-choice, but he ignores the fact that he has created the economic circumstances that lead so many women to believe they do not have a choice. I believe that if he is actually pro-choice, he should lift families out of poverty; fund child care, housing and health care services; and provide a decent living wage for women in order that they will believe they have a future and that there is hope and a choice for them.

In the Sunday newspapers the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, stated she had been ignorant when she was pro-life. If she was ignorant, that was her responsibility because no elected representative should come into this Chamber and speak on the issue unless he or she has carried out research and listened to the people on both sides of the debate. She has also stated a "No" vote might not be expected. What kind of a slap in the face to the democratic process is it when a Minister alludes to the holding of a second referendum before the date of the first one has been selected?

The right to life is one of the most fundamental rights there is. It is probably one of the most defining values any of us on both sides of the debate recognises. Typically, it is not something that changes among people with radical speed. A number of months ago the debate was focused on the most difficult situations in people's lives.

It focused on life-limiting disability, and children conceived in rape and incest. That is not where the debate is at anymore. In a few months the debate has been radically transformed into a debate about whether we should have abortion on request in this State. The debate on repeal is currently a debate on abortion on request with no restriction for the first 12 weeks of the child's existence. At 12 weeks it is about the time when mothers and fathers get to see the child for the first time at the 12-week scan. Most families will have in their homes photographs of their 12-week gestational child. What is being discussed is a regime that will go much further than the people in the country will accept.

Another element is not being discussed. The Minister's policy document does not seem to mention any gestational limit for certain children, maybe children with life-limiting conditions. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has recently objected to foetal fatal impairments being used as a specific ground for abortion. The committee maintained that there was no guarantee as to whether a foetal abnormality was fatal. It stated:

Even if the condition is considered fatal, there is still a decision made on the basis of impairment. Often it cannot be said if an impairment is fatal. Experience shows that assessments on impairment conditions are often false.

The debate has moved on with surprising rapidity recently, which has taken people by surprise. Some people have told me that it feels like a blank cheque. Two years ago the Taoiseach, then a Minister, alluded to the fact that if we delete the eighth amendment from the Constitution, we would literally leave every single decision in the hands of governments which individuals may or may not have voted for. He said that the Dáil could legislate even for third-trimester terminations. He said that as if it was shocking and yet the Minister's policy document does not give a gestational limit for children with life-limiting conditions.

In his opening speech on the debate, the Minister referred to Miss C. The Minister has wronged Miss C in this situation because she specifically asked that her case would not be used as an advertisement for abortion. Her experience highlights a taboo issue that is not being discussed, which is the damage that abortion can do to mothers as well. Miss C was brutally raped when she was 13 years old and she was taken by the HSE to England for an abortion. In the days before her abortion she said she was drugged to the eyeballs in her own room. The staff held her down and injected her with drugs. Her parents took a legal action to try to prevent the abortion, but they failed. A few years ago Gemma O'Doherty published an interview with her, in which she said:

It only really hits you after you have children. You never forget your missing baby. It plays on your mind every day. Any woman who has an abortion and then goes on to become a mother will know all about it...

Due to the Supreme Court judgment, no further protection for an unborn child is left in the Constitution apart from the eighth amendment. The only thing that stands now to protect unborn children in the Constitution is the vote of the Irish people.

One of the major difficulties I have with abortion is the effect it has on people on low incomes. In the United States, people on low incomes or below the poverty line are much more likely to have abortions. In New York city, for example, more black children were aborted than came to term. That is in a city that cries that black lives matter there.

When a law changes, it affects the culture and society in ways that we cannot even imagine. The culture change is not by design but by default. We do not want to become a country that counts chromosomes like other countries do.

Also invisible in this whole debate is the issue of gender-selection abortion, with which I have major difficulties. Estimates by Nobel Prize-winning professors have stated that about 100 million are currently missing from the world due to either gender-selection abortion or infanticide. I do not see anything in the Minister's policy document that could prevent that happening in this country.

The life of the mother should be protected in every crisis bar none. This is a red line issue for me. Ireland has one of the lowest maternity mortality rates in the world - even lower than many countries where abortion is legal. In 2013 I attended the committee dealing with that particular legislation. I asked the masters of the maternity hospitals who were present if they knew of any situation where a mother's life was lost in this country due to the eighth amendment and they all said "No" to me.

This referendum will determine for 50 years hence who lives and who dies. What is at stake in the forthcoming referendum is the existence and the lives of tens of thousands of unborn children. Where there is life, there is hope. I am a firm believer that in the 21st century we have to have a society that looks to protect every single mother and child and leaves absolutely no one behind.

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