Bríd Smith criticises three-day wait and travel for abortion care

I do have to come back on a number of things that you said there Minister. First of all to say that you know we are not acknowledging that there's been a service provided for women and girls to seek abortion in this country that I said that is not true. My opening remarks were acknowledging that we'd have massive change since the law was brought in and that abortion has been accessed here and is accessible to a certain cohort in limited circumstances. And actually it's quite coincidental as you know that this bill has been brought before the House on the fifth anniversary repeal because of the lottery system that we have in here. But nevertheless you're right to say that if you match this with Mario O'Shea's report this bill goes further. That's true. That doesn't mean that if this bill was dealt with in the committee that people were not going to put forward amendments and all the rest of it. I note that there are people in this House who are utterly opposed to the change. They were the same people who campaigned vigorously against repeal the Eighth Amendment and were not going to change their minds. They are entitled to their opinion, absolutely, but thankfully we still live in a democracy and the vast majority of people voted to take us out of the dark ages in relation to abortion rights for women and girls in this country. In your opening remarks you talked about the act allowing abortions to be carried out in cases where there is a risk to life, serious harm to health, where a condition might lead to the death of a fetus, either before 28 days without restriction up to 12 weeks, in line with the recommendations of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the 8th. This is not true. The Joint Oireachtas Committee on the 8th did not recommend the 28-day limit on the fatal fetal abnormality, for example, and it certainly did not recommend that women had to wait three days to think about their decision. That was inserted into the heads of the bill by an appeasement towards certain senior members of Cabinet who all of their political lives were opposed to abortion rights in this country. One of them, Simon Coveney, actually wrote an op-ed in The Independent late in March, and remember the referendum was held in May, to say that he was appeased and would give in on the basis of the three-day wait. How utterly misogynistic and insulting is that? I know that thousands of women have found it so in this country. That is why when you look at the statistics of who turned up for the first visit and did not come back for the second visit, many of them went abroad or got the pill illegally online because of this utterly patronising treatment they had to face. Because of the physical reality, for many of those women, I have gone through the detail, the most marginalised women, and Mary O'Shea outlines it in her report, are the ones impacted the most by that three-day wait. That is something that could be lifted straight away. Although you say the heads of Bill were what convinced people to vote yes in the repeal referendum, I have to say, as an activist who knocked on thousands of doors, along with hundreds of other people who knocked on thousands of doors, it never once came up that I am voting yes for the heads of Bill. People voted yes to give women a choice and to stop them travelling out of this country to access basic abortion healthcare. The truth is that the review shows us that they are still travelling at least 200 a year, and by the time you get back to this, another 200 plus will have had to travel, for all the reasons outlined by Mary O'Shea. Richard Boyd Barrett has put it very humanly in his testimony that almost half of those who travel will be people whose pregnancies are fatal fetal abnormalities. Much wanted pregnancies, much wanted children in their lives that they discover it will be impossible for that life to be compatible with life itself. And because of that restrictive 28-day limit, with the criminalisation of abortion, which by the way was not in the heads of the Bill either, and the 14-year sentence was not in the heads of the Bill either, that that would act as a chill factor on doctors to the extent that you have almost half of those who have to travel, travel in that lonely, isolated way. I am not going to repeat the arguments that we heard for the years leading up to the referendum, but they were heart-wrenching. They were tragic stories, they were something that would make every decent human being in this country feel ashamed of the society we had, and that is why we got an astounding yes in the referendum. And you say this debate shows that we need to take our time. It is five years since repeal, it is four years since the legislation going on for five. And we have this evidence in front of us that there are certain obstacles within the legislation that are forcing women to travel and are not delivering a full abortion care service in the country. That is not Breed Smith saying it. That is in a report commissioned by the HSE via your office. A report that was insisted on in the legislation, that is as much part of the legislation as any other measure, that we review this law because it is brand new. We do not know how it is going to be enacted or how it will play out. We have to see how it is playing out from the point of view of those who need to access the service and those who are providing of it. So it is very clear. It is very clear what is required. And it does not require you or the Cabinet or even this Oireachtas to agonise over it for a whole year. It requires to look at the scientific evidence. Neither you or I are as well equipped as Dr. Mary O'Shea and her team to assess what the needs of pregnant people and their health providers are in this country. There is no grey area in that. There are two measures in her recommendations that could be applied immediately that are also in this bill. Lift the three-day wait, decriminalise abortion for the abortion providers and begin to deal with the other issues, which is the limitations around the 12-week cap that is put on the provision of abortion and how we are dealing with the requests of abortion on the basis of risk to health and mental health. That is what our bill is trying to do. You have a problem with it. The whole of the Cabinet seems to have a problem with it. Certain members are much more than others. But I am telling you, Minister, if you wait a whole year and you are about to park this for a year, you are looking at hundreds more people being put out of this country and not able to access the healthcare that they should be entitled to. Finally, I would say this to you, I have been through the experience of a bill being parked for a whole year, affecting more than half a million retired workers. It was parked for a year in 2018 and we are still waiting in 2023 for it to be dealt with, because they do not want to deal with it. They do not want to give retired workers the rights they deserve. The Cabinet and the politicians on your side of the House do not want to deal with this before another election. Even if it goes to next autumn and we look at this again, we will be into the last hurdles before we go into an election when we begin to look at it. That is what the conservative elements of Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael and some of the independents in this House are trying to avoid. They are trying to avoid the reality for women in this country, for women and girls who are being forced to travel, who do not have access to full abortion healthcare services. I want to thank Mary O'Shea. I think you should have been a bit more robustly defending the critique of her report that was given from this side of the House in your reply here. I think that was much more heavily critiqued than what we are trying to do here. I am genuinely coming at this because I am here tonight to support, defend and advocate for full access to healthcare for women and girls in this country. No other reason. I am not trying to stir it up. I am not trying to be controversial. That is why we brought these amendments and thankfully we got chosen to bring them before the House in an appropriate time, with the backup from Mary O'Shea's report telling us all that we need to know. I think the medical practice and people you have to deal with on a daily basis would really be in favour of you lifting the criminalisation of doctors immediately. There is no other aspect of medical care that is criminalised. If people have a problem with the treatment they got or the operations or the procedures they received, it comes under civil law. This is under criminal law and acts as a chill factor on doctors being able to provide the care they want to provide, despite what some people claim, doctors do care about life and they care about the lives of women and girls as well as unborn life. That is something that you could act on immediately. I know it would be hugely appreciated by the medical profession. I know when those who suffer fatal fetal abnormality have to go to Britain and some of them have been in my constituency and came to me personally. I know what is said to them by medical practitioners in Britain, have you not sorted this out in your own country? We understood that you are entitled to this because there is this anomaly there that is stopping the provision of the care to those who most desperately need it. I think shame on the Government for putting this amendment, for trying to block the bill. You will probably be successful given the weight of the votes that you will get in this House. Unfortunately, you probably will not allow for a free vote of members of your own parties. That being said, I would repeat what Deputy Boyd Barrett finished by saying to you, take away that amendment. Do not put it before the House. At least do not put it to a vote next Wednesday. You are doing a huge disservice to the people who need abortion care in this country. Thank you Deputy. Thank you Deputy.