Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have to come back on a number of things the Minister said. To say that we are not acknowledging that there has been a service provided for women and girls to seek abortion in this country is not true. My opening remarks acknowledged that we have had massive change since the law was brought in and that abortion has been accessed here and is accessible to a certain cohort in limited circumstances.

It is quite coincidental, as the Minister knows, that the Bill has been brought before the House on the fifth anniversary of repeal because of the lottery system we have. Nevertheless the Minister is right to say that if we match this with Marie O'Shea's report the Bill goes further. That is true. That does not mean if the Bill was dealt with in a committee that people would not put forward amendments and all the rest. I note there are people in the House who are utterly opposed to the change. They are the same people who campaigned vigorously against repeal of the eighth amendment and were not going to change their minds. They are entitled to their opinion but, thankfully, we still live in a democracy and the vast majority of people voted to take us out of the dark ages in regard to abortion rights for women and girls in this country.

In his opening remarks, the Minister spoke about the Act allowing abortions to be carried out in cases where there is a risk to life, serious harm to health, a condition that might lead to the death of the foetus before 28 days and without restriction for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, in line with the recommendations of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment. This is not true. The committee did not recommend the 28-day limit on fatal foetal abnormalities and certainly did not recommend that women had to wait three days to think about the decision. That was inserted into the heads of the Bill as an appeasement towards certain senior members of Cabinet who, all of their political lives, were opposed to abortion rights in this country. One of them, the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, wrote an op-ed in theIrish Independentin late March 2018 - the referendum was held in May - in which he said he was appeased and would give in on the basis of the three-day wait. How utterly misogynistic and insulting is that? Thousands of women have found that to be the case in this country.

When we look at statistics on who did not turn up for the second visit following a first, we find many went abroad or got the pill illegally online because of the utterly patronising treatment they had to face. I have gone through the details. The reality is that the most marginalised women, as Marie O'Shea outlined, are the ones impacted the most by the three-day wait. That is something that could be lifted straight away.

Although the Minister said the heads of the Bill were what convinced people to vote "Yes" in the repeal referendum, as an activist who knocked on thousands of doors, along with hundreds of other people who knocked on thousands of doors, it never once came up that people were voting "Yes" based on the heads of the Bill. People voted "Yes" to give women a choice and to stop them travelling out of the country to access basic abortion health care. The truth is that the review shows us that they are still travelling – at least 200 a year – and by the time we get back to this another 200 or more women will have had to travel for all of the reasons outlined by Marie O'Shea.

In his testimony, Deputy Boyd Barrett put it very humanely when he said that almost half of those who travel will be people whose pregnancies are fatal foetal abnormalities. They have much wanted pregnancies and children, but they have discovered it will be impossible for that life to be compatible with life itself. Due to the restrictive 28-day limit and the criminalisation of abortion which, by the way, was not in the heads of the Bill, along with the 14-year sentence, that acts as a chill factor on doctors to the extent that almost half of those who had to travel did so in a lonely and isolated way.

I will not repeat the arguments that we heard in the years leading up to the referendum, but there were heart-wrenching and tragic stories. They are something that would make every decent human being in this country feel ashamed of the society we had. That is why we got an astounding "Yes" in the referendum.

The Minister said this debate shows we need to take our time. It has been five years since repeal and four years since the legislation was introduced. We have evidence in front of us that there are certain obstacles within the legislation that are forcing women to travel and a full abortion care service is not being delivered in this country. That is not me saying it; that is in a report commissioned by the HSE via the office of the Minister. It was a report that was insisted on in the legislation. It is as much a part of the legislation as any other measure.

We are required to review the law because it is brand new and we do not know how it will be enacted or play out. We have to see how it is playing out from the point of view of those who need to access the service and those who are providing it. It is very clear what is required and it does not require the Minister, Cabinet or even the Oireachtas to agonise over it for a whole year. It requires us to look at the scientific evidence. Neither the Minister nor I are as well as equipped as Marie O'Shea and her team to assess the needs of pregnant people and their health providers in this country. There is no grey area in that.

There are two measures in the recommendations that could be applied immediately and are also in this Bill. We can lift the three-day wait, decriminalise abortion for abortion providers and begin to deal with other issues, including limitations around the 12-week cap on the provision of abortion and how we deal with requests for abortion on the basis of risk to health, including mental health.

That is what our Bill is trying to do. The Minister has a problem with it, the whole Cabinet seems to have a problem with it and certain Members much more than others appear to have a difficulty with it. If the Minister is about to park this for a year, he is looking at hundreds more people being put out of this country and unable to access the healthcare to which they are entitled.

I have been through the experience of a Bill being parked for a whole year. That affected more than 500,000 retired workers. It was parked for a year in 2018. We are still waiting for the matter to which it relates to be dealt with in 2023. That is because the Government does not want to deal with it. The Government does not want to give retired workers the rights they deserve and the Cabinet and politicians on the Minister's side of the House do not want to deal with it before another election. Even if it goes to next autumn, we will be coming up on the last hurdles prior to a general election before we begin to look at the matter again. That is what the conservative elements of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and some of the Independents in this House are trying to avoid. They are trying to avoid the reality for women and girls who are being forced to travel and who do not have access to full abortion healthcare services.

I thank Marie O'Shea. The Minister should have been more robust in his defence of the critique of her report given from this side of the House because it was much more heavily critiqued than what we are trying to do here. I am here to support, defend and advocate for full access to healthcare for women and girls in this country. There is no other reason. I am not trying to stir it up. I am not trying to be controversial. That is why we brought these amendments and, thankfully, we got chosen to bring them before the House at an appropriate time, with Marie O'Shea's report telling us all that we need to know.

Those in medical practice and the people the Minister has to deal with on a daily basis would be in favour of him removing the criminalisation of doctors immediately, particularly as there is no other aspect of medical care that is criminalised. If people have a problem with the treatment they got or the operations or procedures they received, it comes under civil law. This is under criminal law and acts as a chill factor in the context of doctors being able to provide the care they want to provide. Despite what some people claim, doctors care about life. They care about the lives of women and girls, as well as unborn life. That is something the Minister could act on immediately. I know it would be hugely appreciated by the medical profession. I know when those who suffer fatal foetal abnormality have had to go to Britain. Some of these women are constituents of mine. They came to me and informed be about what was said to them by medical practitioners in Britain. They were asked whether the matter had not been resolved in their country. Those practitioners understood that the women were entitled to this service but that there is an anomaly in Ireland stopping the provision of care to those who most desperately need it.

Shame on the Government for tabling the amendment and trying to block the Bill. The Government will probably be successful, given the number of the votes it will get in this House. Unfortunately, the Government will probably not allow for a free vote of members of its own parties. That said, I echo what Deputy Boyd Barrett said. Take the amendment away; do not put it to a vote next Wednesday. If it is put to the House, the Minister will be doing a huge disservice to the people who need abortion care in this country.

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