Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 42:

In page 14, to delete lines 31 to 36, and in page 15, to delete lines 1 to 29 and substitute the following:“22.The Executive shall, for the purpose of monitoring and evaluation, keep records of terminations of pregnancy carried out in accordance with sections 11, 12, 13and 14and publish an annual statistical report with respect to the incidence of and trends in relation to abortion.”.

I will be as brief as I can. We are proposing the deletion of the current notification system as outlined in the Bill and replacing it with a system that would work to give us some useful information in ascertaining whether the introduction of safe abortion in Ireland had had the same impact as in other countries. The way the Bill has been drafted is based on the notification provisions in the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act. This is overly cumbersome and inadequate to develop the public health data a new reproductive healthcare service requires. The provisions, including the obligation to notify the Minister for Health each time a termination is carried out, as well as providing the Medical Council registration number, have no public health rationale and only serve to perpetuate abortion stigma. The collection of data such as county of residence and so on is not appropriate. We would instead prefer to see useful statistics that would help us to improve reproductive healthcare for women and girls. That is the purpose of the amendment.

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