Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this Second Stage debate. We are not here to rerun the referendum or to reargue the points that have been made time and again. The debate has already been decided, not by this House but by the citizens of this country in a democratic vote on our Constitution. An overwhelming majority of those who voted in the referendum earlier this year decided to repeal the eighth amendment. That vote must be respected. Our job is not to second-guess or question the result of the referendum. Our job is not to question the decision that has been made by the people. Our job is not to question the validity of the vote just because we may not agree with it. Our job is to respect that vote and to give effect to it. The eighth amendment is already gone - it went the day the vote happened. As legislators, we must fill the vacuum that now exists with legislation. That is the job we were elected to do. We need to be reminded at times that our job is not about imposing our personal views to try to supersede the will of the people. While we may hold very dear personal views on this divisive issue, the will of the people was very clear in this case. The referendum was not decided by a small margin. The "Yes" vote in favour of repealing the eighth amendment was a substantial one.

As a country, we have had a long and difficult debate about this issue, not just in the past two years but over many years. It can be argued that we have had a long and difficult debate on this matter since 1983. It has been a very painful debate for many people, particularly those women who have been affected by this issue. Throughout the meetings of the Citizens' Assembly, the Oireachtas committee hearings, the debates in this House and the referendum campaign, the women who have travelled over the years had to sit silently while they looked at the posters and listened to the differing views expressed during the debates. All of us in here and out there were discussing those women and their families and what they had been through. We will never understand their experiences because we have not had to live them, whereas they are still living their experiences. I do not mean to gloat or be triumphalist when I acknowledge genuinely that people on the other side of this debate felt as passionately about a "No" vote as I felt about a "Yes" vote. I can imagine how difficult polling day and, in particular, the day of the count must have been for them. Obviously, the exit poll was released on the night before the count. I saw at first hand how upset people who had campaigned for a "No" vote were in the count centre in my constituency. The views and beliefs that they hold genuinely for various reasons have to be respected.

I acknowledge that some people are very upset about the outcome of the vote in the referendum but that does not change the outcome, which was that our citizens, by a two-thirds to one-third majority, voted to repeal the eighth amendment and to provide for abortion services in this country. They did that for numerous reasons. All Members in this House have engaged with people not only in our own constituencies but across the country on all sides of the debate. I refer to women who have been personally affected and had taken different views on this issue. However, it is very important that we progress this legislation. It has to come into effect.

The purpose of the legislation is not to upset people. It is to provide proper healthcare, maternity care and reproductive healthcare for the women of this country to stop the daily and weekly necessity of Irish women having to get on a boat or a plane and travel to another country to avail of its healthcare system. Something that people were slow to admit and accept was that we already had abortion in this country. We have abortion in this country. Women have abortions in this country every day, every week. If they cannot afford it or find they are unable to travel, they procure the abortion pill online. Maintaining the eighth amendment or the status quo, therefore, was not going to stop or change that. What it meant was that we were happy for people to travel to avail of a healthcare system in another country, that we did not want to deal with it here and that we were happy to avail of the ease with which people could travel to the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions to avail of a service that should be available to our women in their own country.

That journey has a lasting impact not only on the woman in question but on her partner and on the family. That impact does not go away. I can imagine the pain that must have been felt when this campaign was ongoing for people to have all of that brought up again, to have to deal with that and face it every day, perhaps sitting on a bus as they commuted to work, looking at those posters and reading that commentary. It was unpalatable, unsavoury and cruel at times. Some of it was so debased and it was so unnecessary. One would have to question the motives of those people and what their intention was. I would have to question how those people who designed those posters really felt about women.

In terms of the situation that still currently prevails, in the absence of this legislation and if we take our time getting it through the House, we are continuing to force women to travel, women who are given a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality, that devastating news, and finding that there is no place to go, no advice or help available in their own country. The medical team and doctors who have been with the woman all the way through suddenly find that they cannot talk to her. They cannot even refer her. They cannot help her. That is happening today, it will happen tomorrow, and the day after. While there is no guillotine on this debate, I urge Deputies to be respectful, to have their say but not to try to filibuster the debate.

I disagree with Deputy Tóibín that the referendum was just about repealing the eighth amendment and that the Bill before us had nothing to do with that vote. Clearly, there was a reason the Bill was published. We discussed at the Oireachtas committee that there was a need to publish the proposed legislation in order that people would know for what they were voting. The heads of the Bill were published for that reason. There was good engagement. There was a very high degree of understanding and knowledge of what was being proposed in terms of what would happen in the event of a repeal vote and the eighth amendment being removed. People understood the 12-week proposal. They understood what was allowed up to 12 weeks and what was permitted after that. That was because the heads of the Bill were published and that discussion took place. It is disingenuous and incorrect to say that the Bill did not inform the way they voted or that it was not part of the context. Of course, it was. As a result of that, it would be incorrect to try to substantially change the Bill in this House today or on any other occasion because it would go against the will of the people and for what they voted.

It appears from some of the debate in the House this evening and some of the commentary outside these four walls that some people are now seeking to restrict the remit of the Bill, of what it is capable of enacting and, in turn, trying to restrict women's access to proper reproductive healthcare and women's choice. Ultimately, that is what it comes down to, a woman's right to choose what happens to her, to her body and to her future.

A constituent told me recently that he strongly believed there should be a psychiatric test for any woman seeking to avail of an abortion because, clearly, she could not be of right mind, she must not know what she is doing and she must not have thought about it. It is that kind of insulting, derogatory opinion that has led hundreds of thousands of women to take the stand they have taken, to say it is their right to choose and they will have the only say over their future.

This comes down to trusting women. The suggestion has been made that because it is a little handier to procure a termination in that the woman will not now have to order the pill or make that trip to the UK, it will be a more flippant decision to go ahead and have an abortion because it is a little easier to get one than it used to be in the past. That kind of commentary is degrading and insulting to women. No woman takes that decision lightly. Every woman who gets to the point where she wants to procure a termination or have an abortion for whatever reason has thought long and hard about that decision. She has her own reasons and they are hers alone. They are not mine or those of other Deputies. It is not for me, or anybody else, to judge in that regard.

The suggestion was made in the House earlier that the mother and the unborn have an equal right to life. It is simply not possible because the two are interconnected. When we face a difficult decision where a woman's health is severely at risk or where she has been raped and is pregnant as a result of that rape, or where there is a fatal foetal abnormality and for whatever reason the woman believes she cannot continue with that pregnancy, how can the rights be equal? They cannot. There has to be a judgment call and the best person to make that call is the woman herself.

Is the solution in those situations where a woman has been raped to force her to remain pregnant against her will? Is that the suggestion of Deputies in this House? Do they believe that is humane and is respecting her rights, her bodily integrity, her right to decide her future and to have control over her body when that control had been taken away from her to lead her into that situation? Is that really the solution, a forced pregnancy? Clearly, the majority of our citizens said "No" to that, that it was not a solution and should never be one. Our citizens trust the women of this country to do the right thing.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the many medical practitioners who advocated so strongly and eloquently in favour of repealing the eighth amendment, not on a populist basis or a personal view but on a medical basis. The clearly told us in committee time and again that they felt hamstrung in their ability to do their job, which is to provide proper healthcare for women in this country. It is well documented and well evidenced that women in this country have lost their lives because of our abortion laws. Without question, that has happened.

That brings me to my next point around trust. We have to trust our doctors. I trust our doctors. I found their evidence to our committee and the advocacy with which they engaged to be extremely persuasive. I trusted that they were coming from a position where their ultimate goal was to care for their patient and ensure that every woman in this country has access to the best of medical treatment whenever she needs it.

I refer to the terminology being used by some speakers, such as that if one voted "Yes", one is somehow pro-abortion. It is not about being pro-abortion or wanting to advocate for that choice. It is about trusting women, trusting our doctors and allowing the woman in question who finds herself in that position, for whatever reason, to make that choice for herself. We do not need to go down a road where we want to further control women and doctors as they navigate that most complex situation.

As I said, this is not a flippant decision that anybody makes and no one should stand in judgment of any woman because we do not and will never know her situation. However, the choice should be respected both ways. If a woman chooses to continue with her pregnancy in very difficult circumstances, if she is given a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality and wants to continue with that pregnancy, she and her family should be given every support to do that. There should be proper services, including counselling, in place and every support that woman should ever need. Equally, if the woman chooses not to continue with the pregnancy for whatever reason, the proper supports should be available in this country and that includes proper aftercare, something which has been lacking.

Today, for any woman who has travelled to the UK for an abortion or who has procured an abortion pill online, there is no aftercare, no support and nowhere to go. That only compounds the hurt, pain and trauma even further, leaving women feeling like they are criminals in their own country for making a choice that they genuinely believe is the right one for them.

Those advocating for more restrictive legislation and those still advocating for a No vote in a referendum that has since passed still cannot answer the questions around rape or fatal foetal abnormality. Their advice is just to put the head down and get on with it. That is the best option - to force a woman to continue with a pregnancy regardless of her circumstances. I am very glad that our citizens took a different approach.

Some of the concerns being raised by those seeking to restrict this legislation further include the idea that disability is a ground for a termination but it is not. We had a debate on that at committee and voted against it. It is not part of the legislation and it is very unfair to citizens to try to suggest that somehow it has crept in through the back door because it simply has not. There was also a suggestion from some contributors that doctors will be forced to carry out terminations against their will. Again, that is an utter lie. It is not true and we should not be peddling such nonsense in this Chamber. We should give due respect to the debate that we are having and tell the truth.

There was commentary earlier about babies being left to die on cold, silver plates in some clinic but that is just utter nonsense. It is not true and it will not happen. That kind of commentary does not help anybody. It does not help to progress the legislation or help us to have a proper debate and discussion on it. All it does is serve to instill fear and doubt among people but I do not know for what purpose. I really do not understand why anybody would suggest that such horrific things will happen because they will not.

It is worth noting that this significant - even using that word is not significant enough - vote and referendum campaign has had a monumental impact on the women of this country and on the younger generation coming forward. In the same year that we celebrate 100 years of women's suffrage and the progress that women in this country have made in that period, the debate on abortion has forced us to look back over a long and dark history when women suffered terribly. If we look at the atrocities of the Magdalene laundries, the Tuam mother and baby home and other homes, we realise that it was not so long ago. That was the very recent past. I think that we have actually reached a critical mass in terms of political life and women finding their voice in the last number of years. These issues force us to look as a country at how we treat women, how we look after them and how we facilitate their voices being heard and listened to, more importantly. In that context, this debate has done us good. We are now in a different space and are looking forward to a brighter future for women in this country and a brighter future for our country because of that.

I genuinely hope that the service is put in place as soon as possible and is done properly, with proper consultation and that the medical profession is with us all the way. We want this service to be in place, to work and be accessible to all women regardless of background, financial position and so on. Any woman who needs this service should be able to avail of it. We need to look at providing proper counselling for women who find themselves in that situation. As a society, we also have to look at how we treat women and single mothers and young mothers in particular. We also need to do an awful lot more around proper healthcare generally for women in this country. The ancillary recommendations of the Oireachtas committee report were referred to earlier and it is really important that they are acted upon with a sense of urgency and are given priority. We must provide better access to contraception, for example, which is still expensive, particularly for young women who are not working and are still at school or in college. There are practical steps that we can take to try to limit the number of unplanned crisis pregnancies in this country and it is incumbent upon us as a State to try to do so. It is also really important that we remove the stigma attached to being a single parent and to getting pregnant when young, as well as the stigma attached to having a termination for whatever reason one has one. It should come down to personal choice. We must respect other people's right and entitlement to make decisions about their own person and their own future.

We must stop trying to control women and to guilt them. Those days are over. That is in the past and we will not take it any more. We are in a new era where women are equal. We have an equal seat at the table and an equal voice. We will ensure that our views on women's issues and on wider societal issues impacting on our position and our participation in this society will be heard and listened to. This debate proved that. There was cross-party co-operation and we all worked together. We put our political differences to one side and our objective was to secure a Yes vote in the referendum and then to see the safe passage of this really important legislation through this Oireachtas so that we can give effect to what was a democratic vote by the citizens of this country. A two thirds to one third majority was in favour of repealing the eighth amendment. It was an historic vote and I feel honoured and proud of the small part that I played in the process. It is incumbent upon us now to ensure that we see the process through to its finish.

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