Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also extend our solidarity and condolences to the communities, friends and above all the families of Ana Kriegel and Jastine Valdez, a girl and a young woman who have lost their lives so horribly and cruelly. We can only imagine the feelings and heartbreak of their loved ones at this most difficult time.

Three days from now, the people will go to the polls to vote on whether to repeal the eighth amendment. The only way we can help women facing crises is by returning a "Yes" vote and removing the eighth amendment from Bunreacht na hÉireann. In the course of this debate, it is important that we deal in fact. I have heard assertions from the "No" campaign and its spokespersons that what they call hard cases - for example, pregnancies resulting from rape or those involving diagnoses of fatal foetal anomalies - can be dealt with under the current constitutional framework. Such assertions are patently untrue. The very same people making this argument campaigned against the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. That Act, now widely recognised as being wholly inadequate, allows doctors to intervene only where a woman's life is a risk. At that time, the people to whom I refer talked about the floodgates being opened and abortion becoming widely available. They were wrong on that matter just as they are wrong now not to acknowledge that the eighth amendment blocks any action to legislate for what they call the hard cases. How do we know this? We know it because we have tried.

Two separate Private Members' Bills on these issues were rejected on the advice of the Attorney General. Therefore, there is only one way we can help women in these circumstances and that is by returning a "Yes" vote on Friday, and to suggest otherwise is entirely disingenuous.

It is important also to remember that these are not exceptional or really hard cases; these are real women facing devastating scenarios and circumstances every day. The eighth amendment represents a real and ongoing threat to the health and lives of Irish women. It places the threat of criminal sanction against doctors for making medical decisions in the best interests of the health of their patients. Those are the facts. On Friday, we have what I regard as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to right a historic wrong, to learn from the misery - the alphabet soup of misery, the litany of misery - that the eighth amendment has brought us.

People are now being told that repeal of the eighth amendment will mean a free for all, with unrestricted access to abortion, abortion for no reason and abortion until birth. I ask the Taoiseach to address these false assertions and to set the record straight.

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