Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

One of the women reported harassment to the gardaí. She was told that it was a case of boy meets girl and that there was nothing to investigate. We know that the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, was of little use, and so far the Taoiseach has also been of no help. This pattern of State harassment and State violence against women, and minimising and ignoring it, is not an isolated incident. A well-known US study found that police officers are 15 times more likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence than the general population. An incredible 40% of them self-reported as having perpetrated domestic violence in the previous year. For some, it is a small step or not a step at all from enforcing the legal violence used by the capitalist state to protect the private property of the rich, mostly against marginalised groups such as those suffering from addiction or homelessness, to taking the step to beating their partner in the home, or even to preying on women in the course of their police work as we saw in the brutal murder of Sarah Everard. Channel 4 News in England recently reported that one woman a week is now coming forward with complaints of domestic abuse by police officers. Every woman spoken to by Channel 4 said that the police failed to investigate their own. Perhaps that is not surprising for a police force in which the murderer of Sarah Everard was casually nicknamed "The Rapist" by his colleagues.

What is the situation here? In the past few months, we have learned the barring orders have been taken out against at least 21 serving gardaí since 2019. Nine of those gardaí are under investigation for alleged breaches of the barring orders and five for alleged coercive control. This follows from revelations that gardaí cancelled more than 3,000 999 calls from women in distress, seeking assistance from the State to protect them from domestic violence in their own homes. Even in instances where victims of domestic violence got a response, an internal Garda investigation found that in some cases they failed to follow procedures for dealing with such cases and that they did not make further checks, either phone calls or visits, to the victim in the days that followed. This is the Irish version of A Rapist in Your Pathwhere agents of the State, the ones who are supposed to protect women from violence, are often the worst perpetrators of gender-based violence and are complicit in covering it up.

I have some brief points on the abortion law review. The fundamental right of bodily autonomy is a necessary starting point for any possibility of gender equality. Until recently, that was completely denied to women in Ireland, courtesy of the eighth amendment. The magnificent mass movement for repeal culminated in a resounding two thirds majority vote in favour of legislating for access to abortion on 25 May 2018. Since then, thousands of pregnant people have legally accessed abortion care in this country but it remains the case that a substantial minority of women are still forced to travel to Britain. Last year, at the height of the Covid pandemic, almost 200 women were forced to travel and 375 were forced to travel the year before. One third had received a devastating diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality but were refused abortion care here. One of the main reasons it is still happening is that section 23 of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 criminalises doctors who get a diagnosis wrong and perform an abortion outside the provisions of the Act, with a prison sentence of up to 14 years. This draconian clause is having a serious chilling effect. The Journalreported earlier in the year that 85% of pregnancy people who came to the advocacy group for help with terminations for medical reasons still ended up having to travel for a termination, many of them for abnormalities commonly recognised as fatal.

The forthcoming review of the Act must address this injustice by decriminalising abortion, removing the chilling effect on doctors, and legislating for the right to choose, in full, without any term limits. One of the mottos of the repeal campaign was "Trust Women". We need to do this not only as the best way of assisting pregnant people faced with devastating decisions about fatal foetal abnormalities and foetal anomalies but to help all women who need abortion care. Only they can make the right decision for them.

A second major issue with the 2018 Act is the ridiculous, patronising and damaging three-day wait period for abortion care. It treats women like airheads incapable of knowing their own minds from one day to the next. Its sole reason for existing is as a sop for misogynistic anti-choicers. It must go in the review. As with all restrictions on abortion, this has the worst impact on marginalised women who may struggle to attend repeated, unnecessary medical appointments. This includes women suffering domestic violence, migrant women, young women, single parents with no one to mind their kids, and women living in many areas in this country without abortion access.

A final issue is the failure of the Government to introduce promised legislation on safe access zones to prevent the harassment by anti-choice zealots of women accessing abortion services and of women simply attending GPs or maternity hospitals. Earlier this week, I stood with activists from Together for Safety, along with many others, to demand that this legislation proceed as a matter of urgency. That must also be done.

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