Seanad debates

Tuesday, 27 March 2018

An Bille um an Séú Leasú is Tríocha ar an mBunreacht 2018: An Dara Céim - Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill 2018: Second Stage

 

2:30 pm

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----they are related to us, they work with us and they are our neighbours. We know them and we are letting them down. We are letting the women who travel down - the women who turn up at the airport as we sit here today in Seanad Éireann. They might be sitting on the seat of a plane beside someone going on a business trip or honeymooners going away and they will make the lonely journey on their own. Not only are we letting them down, we are also letting down the women who tonight, in the privacy of their bedrooms, as we sit here discussing their health care needs in an abstract fashion, will take that pill without any medical supervision or conversation with a doctor and without knowing the quality of the pill they are about to digest. They are the real risks and realities for Irish women in this country. I am fed up of being an ostrich and fed up of us burying our heads in the sand, ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away. It did not work. The aim of the eighth amendment was to prevent abortion being a reality. It failed miserably and hurt women. It is hurting them today and it needs to go.

I have just outlined the Government's position on the issue. I want to be clear again that the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitutional Bill is not about what provisions we think legislation on termination of pregnancy should contain because all of that is hypothetical. If the people decide, as is their sovereign right, to retain the eighth amendment we cannot have a discussion in the House about fatal foetal abnormalities and how we help those women. We cannot have a discussion about how we help the 16 year-old girl who has been raped and has to carry her pregnancy to full term. We cannot have a discussion about how we regulate abortion pills if the eighth amendment remains in our Constitution. We have done an awful lot of work but it is all terribly hypothetical. The people will have their say. I hope they will and I need the Seanad's help to make it a reality. If the Seanad passes the Bill this week, which I hope it will, we will set the date for polling this week so the people will know the specific date in May when they will have their say. I hope in doing so they will keep foremost in their minds that it is an opportunity to place women's health care in their own hands and those of the doctors who care for them, a place where it has always belonged. It is a chance to become a country that cares for our women and supports them in times of crisis, not one that exports and ignores them.

I commend the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution Bill to the House.

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