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

It is very obvious from the response of the Government to our Bill that those in the political establishment have not learned a whole lot from repeal. They should be taking the overwhelming vote for choice that the people gave us five years ago and running with it. Instead, they are hiding behind the sops put into the heads of the Bill before the referendum, designed to appease the Catholic Church, to allow conservative politicians to complete their so-called journeys and to appease what they thought were their own conservative voters. Even now, five years on, when things have moved on even more, when the Government has a report that very clearly says that the three-day wait has to go, that criminalisation of doctors has to go, that women still cannot access abortion on health grounds, and that the 12-week limit is too restrictive, politicians in this Dáil are lagging way behind the people. We should not be surprised. It took them 16 years to legislate for the X-case and 35 years to get the eighth amendment out of the Constitution. Then, when they finally did legislate for abortion, they put a completely unnecessary three-day wait into the law just to make sure that every woman has to wait a little bit longer before accessing the care that she needs. We know the impact that has on accessibility of care. The review of the abortion legislation was delayed until the last possible moment and then they delayed publishing it. Now, they are delaying legislating for the review. It is the same old story. They do not want to go near the issue of abortion because they are afraid it might lose them votes. Let me warn the politicians in Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party and the Independents and everyone else who clings to the fence on this issue.

If they fail to support legislation on this before the next election, they will lose votes from the two thirds of the population who supported repeal and the tens of thousands of young people who have become eligible to vote in the past five years. Women and pregnant people have waited long enough for their basic rights to bodily autonomy and to access the healthcare they need.

We have seen with the row-back of Roe v. Wade in the US what can happen if rights once won are not defended and a reactionary minority succeeds in rolling back progressive gains on equality. We must ensure that never happens here. Who would have thought that only eight years after the marriage equality referendum, we would be seeing a significant and horrifying rise in homophobic attacks? Who would have thought that eight years after the Gender Recognition Act, mainstream media outlets would be exploiting transphobia for clickbait and Fine Gael politicians would be scapegoating trans people to divert attention from the housing crisis? Who would have thought that five years after repeal, half of people faced with fatal foetal anomalies would still be forced to travel to England to access the care they need, that women facing risk to their health after 12 weeks would still be forced to travel and that women and girls would be forced over the 12-week limit by delays in accessing medical appointments?

The Taoiseach notoriously claimed that repeal was "a quiet revolution". Anyone who roared themselves hoarse marching for choice knows it certainly was not a quiet revolution. But it is an unfinished revolution, and we now need to finish the work of repeal and never to forget that it was an active and very loud mass movement that forced a conservative political establishment to act. If the Government insists on kicking this legislation to touch and Opposition Deputies go along with that, then that movement will have to get active again to defend and to extend abortion rights and to ensure that no pregnant person is left behind.

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