Jimmy Harte (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Costello, to the House.

This is a difficult subject for all Members to address but I have that duty, as a legislator, as a citizen and, most of all, as a father, a son and a brother. There are those who say the only people with a conscience are those who will vote "No". After 21 years, people are only coming this week to the realisation they have a conscience. They have missed the plot and have been at a different game than I have. This has been an issue for 30 or 40 years but it has been one for legislators to decide on for 21 years. I will put the lives and the health of my two daughters first. My older daughter does not have children and my younger daughter is only nine years of age. I sincerely hope that by supporting this legislation I will make their future safer because if this Bill does not pass I do not want to be standing in a hospital ward in ten years time wondering about it, telling my daughter that had it only been passed things might have been different.

There has been a great deal of scaremongering about the issue of suicide. Senator Noone spoke about her mother who is a consultant psychiatrist. I have spoken to some psychiatrists from my area who report that nobody has ever presented to them in a suicidal state, demanding an abortion. The psychiatrists are right - abortion is not a cure for suicide. If anybody or any psychiatrist could come into this Chamber and say, "I have a cure for suicide", he or she would win the Nobel Peace Prize. Those people are reflecting on a situation where there is no cure for suicidal intent other than treatment. Suicidal intent is not like a broken arm or leg, where plaster of paris is put on and one is given a tablet. It is a very complicated issue and every community in this country has been affected by it. To use the issue of suicide and claim that women will demand an abortion at eight or nine months is a terrible criticism of the women in this country. My wife is highly offended by it. She has said, "How dare someone say that a woman would demand to have an abortion at eight months when at that stage she is so delighted the baby is due, and so are the father and the family". It has never been shown that a woman has gone to a psychiatrist saying she wants an abortion because she is eight and a half months pregnant. The people who use that argument are not pro-life. I detest those who say they are "pro-life" and try to claim this term for themeselves. Everybody in this country is pro-life. I have not yet met a person who says, "I want to get rid of life, I want to kill someone".

There is something particularly objectionable in organisations which claim to be pro-life deploying some of the tactics that have been used against me and every other Member of this House and the Lower House and claiming, in so doing, that they are seeking to protect the lives of babies and their mothers.

By supporting this Bill, I know that the future health of my daughters is more secure. If people do not trust the medical profession, including psychiatrists and other doctors, they should ask themselves whether, in a situation where a child of theirs is sick at 3 a.m., they would call the taxi man or the doctor. People are saying they do not trust doctors on this issue, but they will happily trust them to deal with appendicitis or a heart operation. The so-called pro-life organisations and the church have maintained a stand-off position on this issue because it is their last lap of honour. If they cannot win this, they are going down a different road to the rest of us. The Ireland I belong to is an Ireland for everybody, not an Ireland for the Catholic Church. I go to mass regularly, as do my wife and children, but the church cannot make me think as it wants me to think. It cannot tell me that what I am doing is against the will of God because it is against the will of the church.

This Bill is designed to protect the lives of women in this country. The church has not respected women over generations - in fact, over thousands of years. As another speaker observed, it is not long since discrimination against women was openly practised. I remember as a young altar boy seeing women being brought into the church a month or so after they had given birth to be "churched" or "cleansed" at the altar by the priest. These women had apparently done something wrong or impure. Meanwhile, their husbands were in the pub drinking, with no apparent need for "cleansing". The church is trying to blackmail people into opposing efforts by the State to legislate for everybody in this country, for an issue that has been hanging around for 21 years. The failure heretofore to bring forward legislation in this area is a disgraceful failure on the part of successive Governments.

Before the last election the Labour Party undertook to legislate for the X case. I got terrible abuse from certain people in Donegal for that position. I was insulted on doorsteps and called everything under the sun. I stood firm, however. The people who matter to me are my family, and it is my family members whom I consult on this and other issues. My mother gave birth to nine children and also suffered several miscarriages. She had no hesitation in giving me her view that these provisions represent progress. She can talk from experience, as can my wife. The 50% of the population who are male should not really be talking about this issue. We do not have the experience to do so. I was in the ward when my wife gave birth to each of our four children. It was an easy number for me, involving no pain. Only women can know the pain of childbirth. The crucial aspect of this legislation is its objective to safeguard the future health of pregnant women in this country by ensuring they will be properly looked after by the medical professional. That is what is being enshrined in the Bill.

What solution would those who are blocking the legislation offer? Their talk is all of suicidality and suicidal ideation, but I have not heard them offer a better solution than what is proposed in the legislation. The Supreme Court has spoken on this issue and the people of the country have given their view in two referenda. If we do not agree with the will of the people, then we are not a Parliament but merely a town council. I say that with respect to town councils. Members of Parliament are elected to legislate, and there was overwhelming support for the Bill in the Lower House last week. The people who voted against the proposals were a mixture of Fianna Fáil Members, on the one hand, and, on the other, United Left Alliance Members who rejected it because it does not go far enough. The people who are against it for the reasons that have been spouted here today make up a very small minority of Members in the Lower House. The Deputies who supported it were acting in accordance with the express wishes of the people who elected them.

In supporting this Bill I can say that my conscience did not kick in last week or the week before. I have had a conscience on this issue for many years. I very much congratulate the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and both parties in government on moving this issue forward. Successive Fianna Fáil Governments dodged the issue because they were always looking down the road to see what the church would say. Members of that party have dodged the issue once again. Credit where it is due, however, Deputy Billy Kelleher, Fianna Fáil's health spokesman, made one of the best speeches on the legislation in the Lower House. He was not browbeaten into it, and I commend him, Deputy Micheál Martin and other members of that party who supported the Bill. It is very easy to jump on the church bandwagon when the priest is telling people on a Sunday morning how the country should be run.