Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

At the ungodly hour of 9 a.m. last Sunday, I had my first experience of being a sideline mom at a match. I cheered on as six-year-olds played as they do, that being, not very well; but they did play. A woman beside me had a three-year-old child with her. My husband and I looked around. We thought that the little girl was gorgeous and said she was lovely. The mother told us not to judge her. I wondered what she meant, but the little girl was watching "Peppa Pig" on a phone. I told the woman there was no judgment and that we had all been that soldier.

We ended up having a conversation about the experience of being judged and the presumption of judgment. We related our experiences as new mothers of people coming up to us, commenting if we were not breastfeeding or about the clothes our children were wearing and saying the things people think they are entitled to say to others. They put their own opinions and judgments out there without any consideration for others or respect for their autonomy.

That sense of entitlement to comment becomes an aggressive entitlement when one is standing outside a service that any woman is legally entitled to get, that is, walking into a GP's practice or maternity hospital to access termination services. How dare anyone decide that he or she can go up and pray into a woman's face, shout rosaries at her and hold up obscene photographs to try to shock and shame her? The generations which shamed women are over. That ended when we voted. As a society, we made a democratic decision to permit terminations. We had a mature debate and it took us a long time to get to the table and make the decision, but we did. Therefore, anyone who has the right to access that service legally also has the right to do so without being coerced or told what choices they should make with their bodies, what services they should access and how they should think by those who are doing so based on their own morality rather than on the medical ethics and entitlements that obtain in our State. The idea of the right to protest is a Trojan horse for intimidation and coercion.That is all it is. It is using our civic right to protest. People should do so outside the Dáil, constituency offices, political party headquarters or appropriate places and zones.

An appropriate zone is not the one a woman needs to go through to access a service when she is already vulnerable and in a position where she needs to be given the freedom to go. Those protestors will not be there after they have coerced and intimidated women to have to go abroad because the service is not available in rural Ireland or not to go at all. They will not be there to pick up the pieces; they never were and they still are not. They are still not paying the bills for the intimidation and control of women over generations in this State. They are still not coughing up the money for that and there is no sign of them coming forward over the mother and baby homes either. How dare anybody decide on the right of bodily integrity for any woman in this State. We have passed that point and we are a mature nation that allows women to decide on their bodily integrity and autonomy. How dare we interfere with that right.

I congratulate Senator Gavan and the Sinn Féin group on bringing this Bill and I congratulate those who signed and supported it. This gives us the opportunity to have the debate, air our positions, agitate for the legislation to be brought forward, consider whatever legislation is still there and how that needs to be enhanced and all of that. That is very important. We have had enough of telling people what to do. At the point where they are crossing that threshold, they need to be left their privacy and the right to attend their doctor, as does everybody else who is attending that doctor. I have seen the protests outside the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street and the clinics in Goatstown. It is an obscenity and coercion and it should not happen. Shame on anyone who thinks he or she has a right to intimidate up that close with such graphic props like photographs and white coffins. I have been one of those women who has crossed that threshold and gone in with my baby's heart no longer beating for a dilation and curettage procedure. I would not want to come out and see white coffins; it is shameful.

I support the Bill and I know the Minister will be bringing forward legislation quickly. It is important we do so now. We need to protect and support the women and we also need to support the practitioners around the country who would wish to provide the service and who currently feel disabled from doing so. That time is over.