Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ninety-nine years ago Dáil Éireann met for the first time in the Mansion House, a building only a few minutes' walk from here. The First Dáil set out a series of principles to show the people what an Irish republic would look like free from Great Britain, principles that were put in place to ensure the republic would provide and care for its people. The eighth amendment is one of the many great things about Ireland that ensures the legacy of those who fought for our freedom will not be forgotten about.

In recent months there has been a great deal of spin about the eighth amendment. The press has been quick to argue against nearly all of the pro-life views expressed. There has been a deliberate attempt by it to silence pro-life views and ensure only one voice will be heard. That has been disappointing, to say the least. We are lucky that the majority of views expressed by Deputies in recent weeks have been respectful and I hope that will continue into the future. However, there has still been a great deal of disappointment. Everyone in the House knows that the pro-life side has been silenced. There are too many in the House who attack those who are pro-life. One person doing this would be one too many, but it is disappointing that a significant minority of Deputies are participating in the debate using such methods. Such methods should not be used in a modern democracy, but they have, unfortunately, become commonplace, not just in this debate but also across the political benches in the debates on a wide range of issues.

Members of the Citizens' Assembly sat through several presentations on the weekends they met, in some of which fleeting references were made to the issues on which they ended up voting, but not a single in-depth presentation was made on any of the 13 grounds for abortion that they ultimately approved and recommended to the Oireachtas. That is a devastating fact that completely undermines the entire process. For example, members of the assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of abortion on the grounds of a mental health risk to the mother. They did so without hearing a single presentation on the issue or from any expert witness. It seems likely that most members of the assembly were unaware that the result of the vote in question went against the peer-reviewed advice in this area of medicine.

Families who owe the lives of their children to the eighth amendment were excluded from the Citizens' Assembly. They say that having to travel to England meant a few extra days' planning and gave them time to think things through a little more and decide against having an abortion. They are horrified at the fact that they even once considered having an abortion a viable option.

When the Oireachtas joint committee first met last year, we were promised a fresh start and that the work of the Citizens' Assembly would not be repeated, but that is not what happened. The committee spoke to 12 witnesses who had previously spoken to the Citizens' Assembly. Like what had happened at the assembly, pro-life experts were given no voice at meetings of the committee which at the outset invited 24 pro-repeal witnesses and just three pro-life witnesses to present to it. On top of this, only three weeks into the proceedings, it was decided by the committee that repeal was, apparently, needed. On such a complex issue, it was a shame that this decision was taken.

We were also promised that "experts" and no advocacy groups on either side of the argument would be invited to the hearings. At the same time, pro-abortion advocacy groups such as the Irish Family Planning Association, the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights and the largest abortion advocacy group in the United Kingdom, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, were invited. The BPAS which was, like the others, introduced as an impartial expert is one of the leading campaigners for abortion globally and has already registered in Ireland the domain name abortion.ie.

It has been estimated that since the eighth amendment was inserted into the Constitution in 1983, 100,000 lives have been saved. Even if the figure were only 10,000 lives, that would be enough. However, we are facing a dangerous debate in which these facts are forgotten by claiming that the 100,000 lives that have been saved would not matter if they had not been given that right. Such estimates have been written off as impossible to calculate, but they are easily calculable. In England one in five pregnancies ends in abortion. In Ireland that number lies at one in 19. If we move Ireland's abortion laws into line with what is in place in England and Wales, that is the type of figure about which we are talking. Bringing Ireland's abortion laws into line with those in other jurisdictions would also mean that unborn children with disabilities would be discriminated against, as pressure would be put on parents to abort their unborn children in such situations. In England 90% of children diagnosed in the womb with Down's syndrome are aborted. In some Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, the figure stands close to 100%. Every single one of us in this Chamber knows families who have children with Down's syndrome. Raising a child with the condition can be difficult, but every good parent makes sacrifices for his or her child and every family with a child with Down's syndrome will say what a blessing the child has been.

It should sicken us when we hear the statistics on abortion. In America, abortion is treated as a public good. The pro-choice think tank, the Guttmacher Institute has come out with the following statistics. Two thirds, which is 68%, of the 1.5 million unplanned births that occurred in 2010 were paid for by public insurance programmes, primarily Medicaid. By comparison, 51% of births overall and 38% of planned births were funded by these programmes. Of the 2 million publicly funded births in 2010, about half were unplanned. By comparison, 38%, or 1.5 million, of 4 million total births nationwide were unplanned. This representation of abortion as a cost-saving measure is not something any of us should want to see in Ireland. Statistics like this are designed to paint abortion as a public good because it saves the state money. Are we really going to start putting a value on human life? That is what abortion does.

Groups like the Guttmacher Institute are linked with Planned Parenthood which is the only winner in the US abortion industry. Staff at Planned Parenthood are paid based on the number of abortion procedures they provide. There is therefore no incentive to talk to women and encourage them not to go through with their abortions. In the Marie Stopes clinics in the UK, staff are given bonuses for ensuring that women who arrive in their clinics carry through with the abortion they sought when they arrived.

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