Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have tabled five amendments in this group which all relate to access to terminations in early pregnancy. My main concern is the three-day waiting period and the way in which pregnancies will be dated. Amendment No. 29 would allow the three-day wait to start from the moment a woman requests the appointment with the medical practitioner. Amendment No. 31 would allow for the three-day waiting period to be waived where the three-day wait would result in the pregnancy exceeding 12 weeks, making a termination on this ground thereafter illegal. Amendment No. 32 would provide for a woman living in a situation of domestic violence or where, as a result of her living circumstances, her life or her health are under threat, to have the three-day waiting period waived and access a termination. Amendment No. 33 would allow for the three-day wait period to be waived where the woman had already met a barrier to her care from a conscientious objection.

The complete inflexibility of the three-day waiting period is a serious problem and one which we cannot stand for. I watched the Minister respond to this issue in the Dáil. He has consistently said that because the waiting period is in the draft legislation it must stay. I do not agree that this should be the case. This legislation was written before the referendum and before we became aware of the extraordinary appetite for change when two thirds of the electorate voted to remove the eighth amendment. This is a different landscape from the one we were in when the heads of the Bill were written. That cannot and should not be ignored. However, if the three-day waiting period is to stay, surely we can find some flexibility to allow it to be waived in extraordinary or extenuating circumstances. That is where these amendments come from.

Conscientious objection is a barrier to care. The amendment would ensure that the three-day waiting period does not apply to a woman whose first appointment with a doctor resulted in an objection to her care. It is not enough to say that the helpline will direct women towards those GPs who will provide a service. The first port of call for any woman, especially women who are on medical cards, would be her GP. She would call her GP first for direction and care. Domestic violence should be grounds for a waiver of the three-day waiting period, and living circumstances in general should also be included.

The three-day waiting period should start from the date the request is made, as happens in the Netherlands, which the Joint Committee on the Repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution heard. The three-day waiting period there is only acceptable if it begins when the woman first calls the doctor. All this three-day waiting period achieves is barriers and distrust. We do not trust women to make up their minds and think through their decisions before they make the call to the doctor. Surely where the pregnancy concerned will exceed 12 weeks, we can make an exception. The Minister has said that a woman under 12 weeks will have access under this section. However, if we do not accept amendment No. 31, a woman legally entitled to an abortion will be denied care because of the three-day wait.I also support the Sinn Féin amendment, which would remove the three-day wait where it would be a barrier to care. The Minister has at all times said this service would be accessible to women and the section exists because the committee recommended that termination in early pregnancy be accessible to women who had experienced rape and incest. How can we possibly justify making a survivor of rape wait three days for no other reason than because it was included by the Department between our committee report and the publication of the draft Bill?

The three-day wait and its particular effect on the poor and marginalised women worries me most as I sometimes feel that in most legislation, it is the most marginalised and those on the fringes of society who are left behind. These include women in addiction and homelessness, as well as those women with low educational attainment. Often self-advocacy, knowing one's rights and being able to access a provider can be limited. This is an issue for those suffering domestic violence, medical card holders and those in direct provision. For example, there is one bus going from Mosney per week. It is a major issue as there is usually only one or two doctors, some of them provided by Safetynet Primary Care personnel operating in the likes of Mosney. What if the doctor is a conscientious objector and a person might have to wait for five or six days before being able to leave Mosney and accessing another doctor? What will happen in rural Ireland if a local doctor objects and a person must travel to another town? What happens in the case of a woman pregnant due to sexual abuse and rape?

The Abortion Support Network clearly outlines this in communication with the Minister and the rest of us this week. It speaks of real-life experiences that it deals with on a daily basis. Ms Mara Clarke notes the plight of homeless women, and the network has been hearing from an increased number of people who are homeless but who need abortion services. A few weeks ago she had four homeless clients in one week, and many of those clients are homeless as a result of abusive relationships, while others have fallen on hard times. Where does the Minister suggest that a homeless woman should go to experience the five to six hours of extreme bleeding and cramping that some people endure, not to mention the additional possible side-effects of nausea, chills, fever and diarrhoea?

I have countless examples of women who are homeless in extreme circumstances. I remember working in a now-closed facility at Aungier Street in approximately 2000. One of the women I met was not only raped repeatedly by her grown-up son but her ex-partner, whom she left by leaving her house, waited outside the post office every week for the one day she would leave the hostel in order to take her money. She had an abusive man standing on Aungier Street stopping her from accessing her own social welfare so how is she meant to make repeated calls to a doctor?

Speaking of women made homeless due to abusive partners, the largest percentage of the Abortion Support Network's clients are in and escaping abusive relationships, often with men who will not use or who sabotage birth control. It can be impossible for these women to leave the house for one doctor appointment and two or three appointments could raise suspicion. In the past the network has arranged for these women to travel on days when their partners were on stag or work trips, or it has advised on how it may be possible to access safe but illegal abortion pills through friends. One women with whom they had arranged travel disappeared and was unreachable. She contacted the network a year later to apologise for going missing but her partner had discovered her plan to terminate and beat her so badly she could not travel. When she got back in touch, she had a young baby and another pregnancy with which she needed help to terminate.

When I read about this one set of circumstances I was reminded of and upset by the case of another women whom I met once approximately eight years ago when I worked helping people with addiction. One service user came into the programme and said she had heard an already isolated migrant woman who lived next door screaming and it sounded like she was being beaten on a regular basis. We took the risk one day to call to the woman in the flat and she was absolutely petrified. She was not suffering addiction but I asked her if she wanted to join the programme to try to get some sort of support. I am trying not to get upset but she looked really unwell. She had a bun in her hair and told us how she was not even allowed to have a hairbrush. She was not allowed to have sanitary products. Instead of her coming to us, she asked if we could bring some stuff with which she could wash herself while her husband was out. After a few days of calling to her and sneaking in sanitary products, we finally convinced her to come to the community centre while her husband was out. She was petrified. We had to hire a hairdresser who spent hours taking the knot from the top of her hair as it was so long since she had been allowed to brush it. She had two young children. After that one day of finally getting her to the centre, she never came back to us again and she stopped opening her door for us. I have no idea if my intervention stopped her being able to come back to us and leaving the house again. She could never make it to a doctor. Three days is not acceptable for women like that and this Bill does not legislate for such women.

Amendment No. 34 would allow for otherwise appropriate medical principles to be incorporated in how we date pregnancies for the purpose of this section. It is drawn from an amendment by Deputy O'Connell in the Dáil. The principle of dating it from the first day of a woman's previous menstrual period is problematic. The Minister knows this and I do not need to elaborate on it. The time in which a woman is defined as pregnant should not be from the first day of her last period as this shortens the amount of time available. In some cases a pregnant woman might be seen as being 12 weeks' pregnant but has really only been pregnant for nine or ten weeks. If we are to keep the three-day wait for the majority of cases, we need to really look at those specific cases and carve out exemptions to that waiting period. Otherwise this will be another piece of legislation that is of no use to women in dire circumstances like the women I have worked with for many years. This three-day waiting period does not help them in any sense.