Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The overwhelming votes for marriage equality and repeal of the eighth amendment were a statement that people do not believe the Catholic Church should decide about people's sexual lives, their identities or women's right to control their own bodies, yet the Government continues to defer to the Catholic Church by allowing it to control much of our health service and most of our education system.

One of the most egregious failures to fully remove the power of the church over the people of this country is in the area of access to abortion for people with pregnancies where there are fatal foetal abnormalities. It is really shameful that because we introduced limits around 12 weeks and a requirement for two doctors to sign off on a foetus not being viable, many people struck with the tragedy of a wanted pregnancy that is not viable because of fatal foetal abnormality must continue to travel to Britain for abortions. That is the case.

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