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

Some people have said that some of the language that has been used so far has been shocking. Many people on this side of the debate feel the Bill is shocking. The Bill itself gives a definition of termination of pregnancy as the ending of the life of a foetus. For many people this is a very difficult and sobering issue to have to deal with. We have been told for years we need to have a debate on abortion but any time a person discusses an abortion, they are closed down in the particular debate. If we are to have a debate on these issues, we need to tolerate people from different sides of the Chamber discussing and representing their views fairly. This debate will be held over the next three days and we should not call each other names. I do not second-guess the motivation of anybody on the other side of the Chamber. If anybody has a radically different view on this issue, I take it as read that his or her view is designed and comes from a human rights and compassionate space. Members should not continuously second-guess the motivations on this side of the Chamber either. To be honest, people spent so much time on Committee Stage second-guessing each other's motivations that it added at least another three or four hours to the debate and I imagine the pro-choice side did not have that as an objective.

It is true that a large majority of people voted for repeal. They were asked a binary question and it is pretty much impossible when asked a binary question to give a view on all the detail of a particular Bill. A large minority voted "No". A total of 723,000 people voted "No", which is more than voted for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, People Before Profit, the Socialist Party and the Social Democrats combined in the most recent election. It is a voice that is entitled to be articulated in the Chamber. We have been debating this for more than an hour and 20 minutes and only three pro-life voices have been heard and all of them have been attacked for what they have said on the issue.

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