Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

A Chathoirligh, I thank you for welcoming our friends from St. Columb’s. Later this morning they are going to visit the bust of John Hume, a former past pupil of the school, which was unveiled here just recently. I congratulate James Tourish in particular on being the winner of the life advocate awards. Those awards are about encouraging respect for human life at all stages. It is in that context that I raise today the issue of the Government's three-year review on abortion. The radical nature of what is being proposed by the reviewers is tragic but far from surprising, given there was a terrible lack of independence right from the get-go. It was pointed out in this House that the person chairing it and those doing the research were either supporters of repeal or abortion activists.

That is a real tragedy because these recommendations show that there was no engagement with women who, for example, changed their mind after their first appointment. Some 4,000 over the past three years did not have their abortion after the first appointment. Some of those, of course, may have been miscarriages but not one single woman was interviewed and there was no desire to see if that three-day waiting period saved lives, which we all know it did. There was no interest either in late-term abortions or the complete lack of mandated pain relief, even precautionary pain relief.

There is something heartless and callous about what is in this report and, of course, it also goes against all of the guarantees that some politicians said were sufficient to satisfy them to support repeal. When we see such callous disrespect for human life in one area, we cannot but wonder in what other areas of our life is that lack of respect for human life going to break out. We live in a time when we need to be showing solidarity with each other, and solidarity means including everybody, including the unborn, including the person with disability, including the refugee. We have abandoned that solidarity in these Houses in recent years. I hope we can work together to recover it.