Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

So many people would love to have a baby but cannot. If a mother is in trouble, why can she not get help and seek to have her baby adopted by such people? Many couples would love to adopt a baby.

What about the lovely, big families that were reared around my neck of the woods? There were 22 Cahills, 17 Lovetts and 15 O'Connors who are still around. They were fine boys and girls. There were also 16 O'Sullivans. I know of a girl who has arrived in our neck of the woods from another county. She is very welcome. There were 22 in her family. She told me of how their father took them to school in a cattle box tied onto a Ford 3000 tractor. At one point, 14 of them were going to the local primary school at the same time.

Such families did not have the dole or social welfare and the children helped their parents to rear one another. None of them starved or perished from the cold. While we rightly criticise the Government for many failings, it is not legitimate to propagate abortion because the Government is failing in terms of housing, health and other services. However, some Members have the ridiculous idea of suggesting that the Government not providing services is the reason babies should be aborted. I named a number of families, but there are none like them anymore. Families with four, five or six children are considered large these days.

To everyone who will vote in the referendum, what is being proposed here is to get rid of the eighth amendment and allow for the abortion of babies up to 12 weeks gestation. There are many good people out there and a lot of them have been contacting me in recent months. They are appalled by the suggestion that unborn babies of up to 12 weeks gestation should be aborted. Maybe the Government is not in the real world or does not understand this, but they are rightly appalled. I ask people to reject this referendum out of hand. There will never be a second chance. As sure as day follows night, the 12 weeks will be increased to 19 weeks or maybe 25 weeks. What if someone like Hillary Clinton came along and got power in these Chambers? She said that it would be fine to abort babies up to eight and a half months.

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