Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

My daughter, Liadain, would have been 19 now. I thought of her last Thursday on count night. I remember feeling her kicks and movements before she was born and the final moments when she went still. She was stillborn as a result of a cord accident at birth, which is very unusual but it can happen.

Let me be clear about this, I took my precious little daughter and put her in a little box given to me by the midwives in the Coombe hospital. I laid her in the box and put a little towel over her and then I walked through the maternity ward to the reception desk where other midwives very kindly brought me to the morgue. They also gave me a little piece of curtain-type material. My daughter was so small. I was given a Polaroid camera so I could take photographs of our little baby girls. These are things one does not think of.

When women go to avail of obstetric and gynaecological services, very often it is an exquisitely painful moment in their lives. I absolutely and unequivocally support the right of all women to choose and to assert their bodily autonomy, but that is not the environment where someone should have to run the gauntlet of people holding posters. I do not care if they are across the street, they do not belong there. It is not an environment where one wants to hear a conversation about that particular moment that one is living in one's life. I do not believe that this suppresses freedom of speech. If people want to protest, they can do so outside the gates of Leinster House. There are particular environments, including outside GP surgeries and hospitals, where this should never ever take place.

I commend the Bill.