Eamonn Coghlan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch.

I was somewhat reluctant to get involved in this debate. Having listened to both sides of the argument, I felt that I was damned if I did and damned if I did not, and I decided only within the past hour or so that perhaps I should make some kind of a contribution on the Bill.

What I want to say is, I am pro-life. As a matter of fact, I love life. As an athlete, I learned the importance of positive mental attitude, PMA. I love getting up in the mornings and I love looking forward to fulfilling a positive day. I always look forward to going out of my way to identify who and how I can help. As a father of four children and grandfather of two healthy grandchildren, nothing has been as important to me and my wife as our family and our happiness. Happiness is something, I truly believe, that people forget to work on. It is a very important ingredient in their daily lives and it is something that people should work on every day.

These past few weeks have been most difficult in my new role as a Senator for the past two years, a role much more difficult than that of a sportsman and person in the business community. It has been most disturbing to have been threatened walking in and out of Leinster House. I have received abusive telephone calls to my home and to my office. I have been bombarded with mind-twisting e-mails and literature. It has not been fun and I have done nothing whatsoever personally to any of these persons to warrant this kind of behaviour. We have not yet even voted on this Bill in the House.

I am pro-choice. I believe in this modern world it is every woman's choice to make that difficult personal decision about her own health and welfare and that of the unborn child. However, I believe the Bill does not go far enough because there are situations where the mother is told that the baby will not survive beyond the womb. There are situations every day where pregnancy may result from rape or incest. All of these arguments have been stated already in both Houses, not only in the past number of weeks but for many years.

No matter the result of this debate on the legislation, we cannot deny the fact that abortion happens. One only has to consider the thousands of women who travel to the UK or elsewhere in Europe for abortions. Do we carry on pretending that this is not happening in Ireland? This legislation will not open the floodgates to make abortion readily available. I am not in favour of abortion on demand. However, the legislation is necessary to protect women and to give clarity to the medical profession in crisis cases where fast action is needed. Laws opposing abortion do not stop abortion; they just make it less safe and more life threatening. This Bill is about the protection of life and I will support it.