Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I hope that people here tonight and looking in will understand that we made no effort to delay this Bill in any shape, make or form and the number of amendments should show that also. I am happy to make some brief remarks about these amendments. Given the gravity of what we are dealing with here I hope a certain latitude will prevail in the discussion but I do not see it. I am not holding out any great hope that any of our amendments will be accepted. The Minister set his face against any amendments we put down in good faith on Committee Stage. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for his intervention last night when we were being told that we were doing all kinds of things and that we had ulterior motives in putting down amendments. Every Deputy is entitled to table and move amendments. I am glad that none of that occurred tonight and that we have had a reasonable and respectful debate.

Every Deputy has a duty with a Bill like this to peruse the Bill and take advice on it, look at international practices and try to sanitise the ferocious nature of this Bill. That is merely what we were doing with our amendments. I do not want to be critical of the Bills Office but there was a problem with it on several fronts regarding names on the amendments. One or two of them were sent in without the names of people who did not want to be on them but then they were added. It is a pity because it is a very fraught issue and people have reasons for not supporting an amendment or for supporting it. The Minister said he was not going to break his word and his commitment given to the people during the referendum. When the three-day period was discussed I refrained from getting involved and commenting on it. We know that came from the Minister's colleague who told us all that it was going in for good reasons. The Minister described it in other terms on Committee Stage.

Dr. Peter Thompson told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution that 40 years ago the Parliament in Westminster passed a Private Members' Bill ensuring that doctors who performed abortion under certain circumstances would not be performing an unlawful act. Despite the fact that this was amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 all subsequent attempts to have the Act amended have failed. I believe the same will happen here in respect of positive life-affirming amendments. That is of serious concern.

The most striking aspect of the Bill and indeed of the majority of the amendments before us is the total absence of any positive reference to the unborn child. That is what I feel so strongly and passionately about, as do many people who voted. They had the heads of the Bill but they had no feeling of what the outcome would be or what legislation would come before us. They voted to repeal the eighth amendment and rightfully handed the duty of legislating to the Oireachtas Members elected for the time being. I am privileged to be one of them for the moment.

I am doing my best to ensure the Bill is sanitised and reflects the people whatever which way they voted. We had many debates, interaction, canvassing and everything else in an honest effort to engage, to find out and imagine what might be put before us after the eighth amendment was removed. People on the Government side like to think about polls. I am not a big man for polls but in the exit poll 44% who voted "Yes" did not realise they would be paying for abortions and did not want to be paying for them.

The protections afforded to the unborn child and mother which were guaranteed by the eighth amendment no longer remain in place. Tá siad imithe. They are gone. The people have that on their hands. They voted for that and we have to accept democracy.

That being said, the heads of the Bill, as they were presented to us, and indeed the Bill before us now, should not be seen as a blank slate from which we can draw the most extreme conclusions. Our laws in this area and the amendments which seek to modify them ought to express the guiding and deepest principles of our nation. That is where we are in 2018. I see nothing in the majority of the amendments before us which gave expression to that view. They are by a significant majority devoid of any reference to the right of the unborn child to die a painless death where possible. Deputy Michael Healy-Rae is right, we did meet several people who travelled here to educate us, whose lives were intended to be ended in the womb by abortion but they survived by some miracle. They were aborted and left to die but thankfully in both cases that I met a nurse or a paramedic had compassion and offered some sustenance and they are now adults and have families themselves.

Those experiences left a deep impression on me and on anyone who cares to listen. We know that when they tried to speak here and book hotels to express their views the hotels were picketed and threatened. That is water under the bridge now but it is important to recognise that. No matter what happens here, or when this Bill is finished, and we are not delaying it by one minute, history will record what we said and did and how we voted. Only time will tell what that history will be. We know the history in England and America, safe legal and rare, but there have been millions of abortions. It is a slippery slope.

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