Maire Devine (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is putting it mildly. I try to be polite when I can. I thank the young women who wore their "Repeal" jumpers who went door to door with clipboards in the months leading up to May. We must also thank the crews of people from Together for Yes, Grandmothers for Yes, and Travellers for Yes, and the Termination for Medical Reasons crew, with whom I had the privilege to work with in my own area of Dublin South Central and throughout the State. We must thank the women who opened their hearts to us and told us their stories that had remained hidden, sometimes for decades, and who felt unable to speak. I particularly want to thank the grassroots feminist movement in Ireland that started us on this journey. As I said, it was a cold place in which they spent decades trying to rid us of the conservatism that was smothering us all. They were fighting to revolutionise women's rights and women's reproductive rights way beyond and way before the eighth amendment was inserted into the Constitution in 1983. We should thank these people again and again because without them we would not be here today.

As my colleagues, Deputies Louise O’Reilly and Jonathan O'Brien, did in the Dáil, I intend to raise points in the spirt of co-operation and I wish to be as constructive as possible regarding the legislation because it is incredibly important we get this right. It is so important because right across the world we have seen that once abortion laws are passed it is sometimes very difficult to revisit them and perhaps in our case it might take another 35 years. As has been heavily reported in the media, we need to pass this legislation quickly, with 1 January as the enactment date. We must, however, also make sure that it works and delivers for women. This has been my stance and that of my colleagues as we have seen the Bill progress.

The public discourse during the referendum campaign reflected people’s understanding of abortion as a healthcare issue that should be addressed through progressive patient centred legislation, not through criminal sanctions. As we saw in the Dáil, however, the attempts by progressive Deputies to amend the offences section to ensure that it did not have a chilling effect were completely rebuffed. These offences act as a chilling effect and they are not a medical necessity. The legislation does not explicitly protect doctors nor does it protect in instances where a person may seek help from their mam or dad, their siblings or their friends to procure abortion pills. We have seen the damage this can cause in the North of our country where a mother is on trial for helping her daughter obtain abortion pills. Criminalisation of abortion leads to unsafe and illegal abortion and poor health outcomes for women. There should be nothing in the Bill that causes the doctor to think about anything except the pregnant woman. The Bill should also be free from anything that perpetuates a chilling effect or abortion stigma. These areas need to be looked at as we progress the Bill through the Seanad.

Currently, the Bill allows for abortion in situations of risk to life or health to avert the risk identified. "Avert" is taken to mean "eliminate" in medicolegal settings, suggesting an extremely high barrier for access to abortion care in these situations, and an obligation on women to endure a range of severe health conditions in pregnancy. I put it to the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, that on Report Stage in the Dáil amendments were refused which would have replaced "avert" with either "mitigate" or "reduce" in order to ensure a practical and practicable level of availability of abortion care after 12 weeks. This argument against accepting change to this aspect of the Bill ignores the fact that appropriateness is assessed against the standard of aversion - in other words, the substantive question remains whether the abortion would avert the risk. Witness after witness who attended the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution stated that one cannot grade risk. The committee heard at length the challenges of fixing risk in legislation and accepted that the assessment of risk is best considered in a clinical setting and not defined in legislation as “serious” or “severe”. This provision should, therefore, be amended to better support medical practitioners’ clinical judgment. That is their job. They are the clinicians.

Throughout the campaign, we heard that we needed to trust women and that we needed to allow doctors to do their job and not tie their hands when it came to ensuring safety for women. There is still a conflict between sections 11 and 13 of the Bill and I am not sure this has been explored in enough detail. This amendment concerns the need for the certifying doctor to be the doctor who carries out the termination. A same-doctor requirement is not workable in practice due to part-time working arrangements, rosters, annual leave, sick leave or just not being available on the day. Again, it behoves us to see common sense prevail so the legislation can be workable in a practical sense.

With regard to the three day waiting period, or what has been dubbed the "Coveney cooling-off period", this was not a recommendation of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. There should be no possibility of the waiting period acting as an arbitrary barrier to care. Mandatory waiting periods are not clinically indicated, they impose significant burdens on pregnant women, with reduced access to medical practitioners, and they can cause delays. If a decision is made to include reference to a three day waiting period in legislation, it must begin from a woman’s request for an appointment with her medical practitioner and her initial contact whether it be by phone, email or in person, if it is to be at all workable in practice. Barriers in this instance will be damaging to women and will further force them to travel abroad or to procure abortion pills on the Internet. The exact purpose of this legislation was to stop this. The referendum campaign touched on all these issues and more than 66% of people who voted were adamant that they wanted to stop the situation where women are forced to travel abroad or to buy pills, which are unregulated, on the Internet. This legislation will have served its purpose only if the number of women travelling abroad for terminations or ordering abortion pills over the Internet goes down.

This section of the Bill is completely paternalistic and is insulting to women. A woman's decision to have an abortion is not taken lightly. Such a decision is taken after lengthy considerations, often weeks of processing their thoughts, feelings and assessing their future. In the majority of cases, it completely preoccupies women for much more than the three day trial, which some politicians seem obsessed with. There is also a blind spot in the legislation in respect of women who are under the 12 week limit but waiting the three days would take them over the 12 weeks and result in their inability to access the medical services. I put it to the Minister of State that perhaps the three day waiting period is a sop to those who are sitting on the fence or who were indecisive about allowing women to access healthcare. I believe it is sensible to ensure a clause to provide for a situation where the three day period is overly burdensome, for example, for a woman escaping domestic violence or for a woman in direct provision, or if the three days will see the woman exceed the 12 weeks, or another situation, and that the three days rule could be overridden.

There is belief among politicians that some sort of imagined community of middle Ireland exists and that they need the legislation to be conservative. Let me be clear that this is not the case. The RTÉ exit poll for the referendum revealed that 62% of people - of the more than 66% of people who voted "Yes" - had decided that their vote in the referendum was based on a woman’s right to choose. Unless amended, this legislation fails those voters and it fails women.Since being elected to the Seanad, I have shared my experiences as a psychiatric nurse and of learning and navigating this sometimes weird world of politics. In 1983, I was a young republican when 66% of Ireland voted to insert the eighth amendment into our Constitution. I did not vote to do so. I instinctively knew that my friends, sisters and I had no voice. We were smothered by the raging and damaging conservatism of the State - then led by the church - which put my health and that of my sisters and friends at risk. We grew up traumatised by and terrified of pregnancy and without sex education or access to independent GPs. We had no access to contraception. It was the dark ages for women and girls, but it was only slightly more than three decades ago.

I stand here today in a changing Ireland of which I am very proud. However, I will not be part of the cohort that would allow us to fall at the final hurdle in the race to enact the legislation. We need good, solid, reliable legislation. We have waited far too long. I will deal with the Bill in a spirit of generosity and I hope that the Sinn Fein amendments will be accepted in the same manner.