Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My amendments in this group cover offences. I have tried to ensure that medical practitioners and people who are acting with the explicit permission of the pregnant person are excluded from offences. When we had the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, we had lengthy discussions about the chilling effect of offences and the impact that has on doctors and pregnant people. We concluded that there was a considerable chilling effect from the offences, which were acting in a way that was deeply unhelpful and not necessarily a medical necessity. Medical professionals need to be assured that if they act with good faith and do their job in good faith, they will not be exposing themselves to prison sentences merely for administering healthcare. If we do not explicitly protect doctors, we will continue to see this chilling effect and this could end up endangering women's health. We found at the committee that the chilling effect has an impact and can put women's health in danger.

Amendment No. 7 seeks to ensure that in cases where a pregnant woman explicitly requests someone to help her obtain abortion pills from the Internet or in another manner, that person will not subsequently be guilty of an offence. We do not want to end up with a situation similar to the one we have seen in the North where a woman who was helped by her mother to obtain abortion pills is now under investigation and could possibly be jailed for acting on the explicit instruction of and within the bounds of what her daughter had requested. I believe we have to remove the reference to a 14-year prison sentence. To me, this is just the eighth amendment coming back into the legislation.

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