Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and the opportunity to have this historic debate. I commend the members of the committee. I and the Labour Party fully support their recommendations. We have a long record of standing for repeal of the eighth amendment. The party has a record of social change issues on divorce, contraception, marriage equality and we stand by the committee's recommendations in full, including the recommendation for legal abortion with no restriction as to reason up to 12 weeks if the amendment is to be repealed. I commend Senator Ruane and the other members of the committee and Senator Noone on her excellent chairing of the committee. In particular I commend Deputy Jan O'Sullivan of the Labour Party, who put forward the recommendation for repeal simpliciter. I also commend the Citizens' Assembly.

Like other speakers, I am too young to have voted on the amendment in 1983 but it has cast a blight, a shadow and indeed a chill over my generation of women. I now have daughters growing up under its shadow. I felt its chill particularly strongly as a student in 1989 when I was threatened with imprisonment by the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child, SPUC, and declared bankrupt in court because I and my fellow student officers were giving women in crisis pregnancies information on where to obtain abortions. The student movement has had a proud record of campaigning for repeal since that date. During the decades since we have seen tragic cases such as the X case, Savita's case and others but we have not been able to legislate. As legislators we have not been able to take on our responsibility to women who have been so badly and grievously affected over so many years because of the eighth amendment. It has blocked us from legislating in cases of rape, incest, risks to women's health or fatal foetal abnormality. The only legislation we could pass in 2013 was accused of potentially having a floodgate effect. Only 77 women have had their lives saved under that legislation since it was passed, hardly a floodgate effect. We have seen a strong movement for repeal because of the recognition that we have abdicated our responsibility as legislators because of the eighth amendment. The committee's report marks a refreshing change in approach by legislators, a confronting of reality.

One key reason the committee gave for recommending repeal is health, because the eighth amendment has had a detrimental impact on the provision of services to pregnant women, particularly in respect of the timing of critical decision-making in saving a woman's life. The preponderance of medical opinion before the committee was in favour of repeal. This evidence came from the Irish College of General Practitioners and the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, telling of front-line experiences of being unable to intervene to save a woman's life because of a foetal heartbeat. These sorts of experiences shaped a medical consensus that the eighth amendment is the central barrier to the provision of best-practice reproductive health care in Ireland. There was also a medical consensus that the criminalisation of women, the 14-year sanction, is overly restrictive and creates a chill factor for doctors in seeking to provide high-standard health care.

The committee also recognised the practical reality that thousands of women are accessing abortion every year in England. We know that 3,265 women gave Irish addresses in British abortion clinics in 2016. We know also that thousands more are taking abortion pills illegally in Ireland, 1,748 Irish residents contacted one provider, Women on Waves, in 2016. Since 1983 more than 160,000 women have made the journey for abortion abroad. The eighth amendment has not prevented abortion, it has merely compounded the crisis of a woman's pregnancy by forcing her to travel or face the threat of prosecution. It is a class issue because women who can afford to travel have less difficulty in doing so. That is why the committee says it was persuaded to change the law, even those who did not come to the committee with a pro-choice perspective at the beginning. They also found persuasive the evidence from international experts that abortion rates decrease after access is legalised because post-abortion contraception and other services may be provided. That is part of the ancillary recommendations.

The committee recommended a repeal referendum. That is crucial. It rejected the idea that any replacement text be inserted because it could not recommend removal of the important supervisory jurisdiction of the courts and felt a replacement text would have too profound an effect on the doctrine of separation of powers.This view was shared by a group of prominent and practising barristers who wrote toThe Irish Times in October 2017, saying it would be dangerous to put a replacement text into the Constitution and that it would carry a high risk of unforeseen consequences.

Indeed, back in 1983, Peter Sutherland and Mary Robinson, among others, warned of the dangers of any text in the Constitution. The then Senator Mary Robinson, speaking in the Seanad in May 1983, said that the wording was ambiguous and unsatisfactory and would create uncertainty. The Constitution is no place to regulate abortion. We must leave it to women and their doctors and we must legislate.

Let me put the case strongly for holding the referendum in May. No person aged under 50 years has had the chance to vote on this issue. A June date, as has been suggested, would rule out third level students, parents of secondary school students and others. We need to ensure a maximum turnout in order to end this chill and repeal the eighth amendment for the sake of our daughters and their generation.