Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----and witnessing to the respect due to mothers and unborn babies. I remind my colleagues Senators Clonan, McGreehan and Gavan and the Minister that there are people who witness against abortion, who believe in the value of respecting human life, who support the idea of peaceful and honourable witnessing to this in public and who do not believe dissent should be curtailed. Among them are people who have also suffered. It is important that everyone here accept intellectually and internally that nobody has a monopoly on compassion here. This is not a debate between unthinking, unfeeling protest-minded people who are not in touch with one side of their brain or another; this is about all of us – struggling, suffering humanity – trying to figure out the best way to order our society. There are people who have suffered themselves who believe they should be able to witness to the dignity of human life. There are people who have suffered themselves as a result of abortion and who have hopes regarding the effect of their peaceful and respectful presence within the vicinity of a healthcare facility, without knowing who is going in for what. As I have reminded people already, we do not have a system in which there is any possibility of a person feeling personally targeted. That is the one saving grace of a very bad system whereby we have corrupted healthcare through the provision of abortion. At least it does not arise that a person could feel personally targeted. That is why I disagree with those who allege those who want to witness against abortion are out to be in people’s faces, to use the Minister’s iniquitous phrase. Nobody is in anybody’s face here, and nobody wants to be on anybody’s face here. Let those who do want to be in somebody’s face be targeted by the public order legislation. Let us have no more of this dishonesty from the Government. There is law on the Statute Book, as the Garda Commissioner said.

Regarding those who want to witness to human dignity in a way that has not caused a problem in the eyes of the Limerick or Cork hospitals, the only people the Minister has been able to draw on are those referred to in the highly questionable document of the HSE – it is highly questionable because the HSE is hand in glove with the Government – and what I would regard as a discredited abortion advocacy group. Let us be in no doubt that the impetus for this legislation is not coming from ordinary people who have felt intimidated and therefore got in touch; it is coming from ideological groups who got in touch with Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party and whose opinions are in vogue and who do not have to try very hard at all to gain access. We have seen this insiderism, including in recent days.

I add my welcome to those for the representative from the National Women’s Council of Ireland. That is an organisation that has completely failed to represent the diversity of women’s views across the country.