Sinéad Gibney: End the Mandatory Three-Day Waiting Period

Go raibh maith agat, Ceann Comhairle, and likewise I welcome this Bill, I thank Sinn Féin for their work in bringing it to the Dáil floor. Obviously, I mean, for us as a party, repeal is deeply a part of who we are as a party. There are many members and elected reps indeed within our party who were politically mobilised and activated by their experience in repeal and feel very passionately about the full implementation of the repeal movement and what that means for women and reproductive rights here in Ireland. Most importantly, what I welcome with this is the opportunity to address what is a legislative gap, a gap which has been identified in the O'Shea report and one that we know needs urgently to be addressed because the three-day wait is a hangover of a infantilising, patronising and misogynistic treatment of women that we have seen recur many times in our provision of health services within this country. And synthesiotomy is another example of that. There are many, many more ways in which women have been mistreated through the provision of health care and this is another example of it. Because what we learned from the repeal campaign and the stories of so many women and since then, the implementation of the legislation and the provision of abortion care in Ireland, we know that women know their own bodies. Women need to be trusted. 26 years ago, I was in the middle of crisis pregnancy and I was a young woman who was not in a relationship with my daughter's father and in a lot of ways, people probably would have expected me to be a prime candidate for somebody who would have had an abortion. But I remember from the moment I got pregnant, I knew that I wanted the baby. We talk a lot about choice, but for me, it was just compulsion. There was no kind of decision-making. I think when we think about choice and what women go through, we think that they sit down and add things up or tot things out. That was not my experience. I have had a lot of friends who have accessed abortion care and on paper, they probably had the types of circumstances that people wouldn't have assumed would prompt them towards termination. But the reality is that we, ourselves, individually and in consultation with appropriate healthcare providers, we know our minds, we know our bodies, we know our health, we know our own circumstances and we know our own family planning, so we need to be able to access it. The imposition of a three-day waiting period goes against all of that. By all means, if people wish to access a three-day waiting period and self-impose that, then absolutely, if that makes sense to you as an individual. But again, going back to that determination of choice, we need to speak to women, we need to listen to women and we know that the three-day wait period, if it's imposed in a mandatory way, is wrong, it is redundant and it simply must go. But I do think it's regrettable that this legislation does not cover the full, comprehensive gaps that we know are there because in the OSHA report, there were a number of recommendations that, and obviously the OSHA report was that mechanism, that review mechanism of the legislation was built into the 2018 Act. And what it provided was essentially an analysis of the implementation and a clear roadmap for how to address those gaps. Those operational gaps have been filled, we know that by the department in terms of the provision across multiple hospitals, for example, and all of the different ways that it can be done without legislation. But there has been absolute tumbleweed in relation to the legislative changes that were recommended in that same report. So it is welcome that this is being welcomed by the government, that there are indications that government representatives will be voting in favour of it. But I find it really difficult to stomach then why our own legislation wasn't supported in the same way just a couple of weeks ago because any concerns around these additional measures that we know need to be addressed, I believe could be ironed out at a committee stage. So, I mean, you've spoken in your opening comments, Minister, about an open and respectful debate. That's all we were seeking in providing for a comprehensive coverage of the gaps that were identified by Maria O'Shea and in a way that we believed was a positive legislative roadmap forward. Because if we cast our minds back to 2018, we know it is the case that many, many voters in Ireland were swayed and convinced by the stories of women who had experienced fatal fetal abnormalities and how their experience within the Irish healthcare system had treated them. And the reality is that that experience continues today. Women who welcome these pregnancies, who want these children, are being forced to travel, they are being forced to bring back their baby's bodies in the boots of their car. And that is happening this week, and we have to address that. So we will continue to push for the full legislative changes that are required, that are recommended by the O'Shea report, and that will bring Ireland up to the level of care that we know women deserve in reproductive healthcare. And I look forward to proposing amendments for this legislation that our party, I know, will support and discussing at committee stage how we can actually proactively go against that or support that. Because as Deputy Rice has pointed out, it would be such a shame to expand all of our political capital in addressing one isolated part of what we know is a comprehensive set of legislative gaps and we have to wait for those women who I believe most of us in society really, really have connected with over the story of this dialogue in the last number of years and really help them find the solutions that they need. Go raibh maith agat.