A Ceann Comhairle
Those of us who have the honour and privilege to be elected to this House assume a unique responsibility. We have a very particular duty of care to the men and women of our country. That in upholding our Constitution, we will enact laws which will protect them.
We are all aware of the significance of this Bill, and of the complexity and sensitivity of the issues that it addresses. We are aware, too, of the deeply held personal beliefs of many in Irish society, on both sides of this debate; differing beliefs that are reflected within my own party, as in other parties.
What we should be very clear about, however, is that at its heart, the core purpose of the Bill is very simple. It is about protecting women’s lives.
Every year, some 70,000 women give birth in Ireland. For the vast majority, the outcome is a welcome and happy one. Despite the many pressures on our health service, Ireland is still, statistically, a safe place to give birth. But today, as we sit here in this House, being pregnant in Ireland means being in an uncertain legal and medical position. Those 70,000 women do not, today, know for certain, that if their pregnancy results in a life-threatening situation, they will be able to obtain all necessary medical care. It’s as simple as that.
The purpose of this bill is to give those women – and their partners, their families, their loved ones – that certainty. Certainty to which they are entitled, not just in law, but in all common decency. The certainty of knowing that if they if they become ill to the point where their life is at risk, their doctor will be able to act to save them.
Not a general vague assurance. Not a nod and wink. Not a throw of the dice, but legal certainty. Legal certainty about a woman’s right to life during pregnancy.
That’s what the bill is about. It’s about trusting women when it comes to their own medical care, and providing for a very basic human right. No amount of confusion, or scaremongering, or misinterpretation, changes that reality.
It is thirty years since the 1983 amendment that introduced a Constitutional ban on abortion, and 21 years since the X Case that tested it. A test that some opponents of this Bill want to disregard – or, even better, overturn.
It is worth recalling, a Ceann Comhairle, what the X Case was about. A 14 year old girl became pregnant after being raped by a neighbour, and was suicidal. Her family, in attempting to protect their daughter, instead found themselves before the courts. In the end, the Supreme Court found that suicide is a risk to the life of a pregnant woman. A risk that is rare, but also a risk that is real, and cannot be ignored.
Yet, more than ten years after ‘X’, it was left to another woman to ask the courts – and not her doctors – to determine the treatment she was entitled to in case of a risk to her life. This was Miss C, a cancer patient in remission, who successfully appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. That is the judgement, to which this Government pledged to respond.
Some opponents of this Bill want to turn the clock back to 1983. To Ireland as it was then.
They want an Ireland, where a woman’s right to life is not self-evident, but to be parsed and weighed by lawyers.
An Ireland that would risk the life of a suicidal 14 year-old rape victim, as though suicide was not fatal.
An Ireland where a cancer patient, who is pregnant, cannot get an answer from her doctors about what treatment she is entitled to.
An Ireland where a young woman is miscarrying and at risk of infection, but whose care is tragically delayed.
An Ireland that sits back and simply accepts, this is how women are treated.
But we are not that Ireland anymore.
I am the leader of a party that has fought, for decades, to change that Ireland. To make it a more modern, more equal, more compassionate place. To take the State out of people’s bedrooms. To liberalise our laws. We have campaigned for over a decade, and through three general elections, to legislate for the X Case.
And I want to pay tribute, today, for the men and women – elected representatives and activists – who know what it is to be denounced from the pulpit, in their own communities, for views that, today, are part of the mainstream of public opinion. The Taoiseach, too, has experienced some of that vitriol from a small section of society, that seeks to impose its ideology on the majority.
The tragic death of Savita Halapannavar served to underline the urgent need for legislation, that should not have taken 21 years and six successive governments to introduce. When a new Government was formed in 2011, it was then that the decision was taken that this would not be the seventh to ignore an inconvenient truth.
This is a Government that is legislating for the X Case, because the Labour Party, and Fine Gael, negotiated an agreed approach in our Programme for Government. Because we established an Expert Group to establish how we might implement the judgement of the European Court of Human rights, and which, within the confines of the Constitution, made recommendations grounded in medical practice, common sense, and the law. And because this is a Government that will legislate for Ireland as it is today. An Ireland whose laws tolerate difference, and do not seek to impose the views of one section of Irish society, on the whole.
This country, and this Government, is not going back to the days when one Church determined the boundaries of women’s lives. When one Church controlled the most intimate details of people’s private lives. When one Church held sway over the kind of maternity care women could receive in our hospitals, with devastating results.
Those days are over. Ours is a free country, where freedom of religion and freedom of conscience is respected, upheld and defended. But this House is a chamber of democrats, and we will legislate in line with our Constitution, for today’s Ireland.
Am I proud that this Government is, finally, enacting a law to protect women’s lives in pregnancy? Yes I am. Do I believe that this is a perfect piece of legislation? I do not. I have no doubt that it will fall short in the face of hard cases. It cannot offer a woman, facing the trauma of having to carry, for nine months, a baby that will never survive outside the womb, the compassion that she deserves. Nor can it offer compassion to a woman or a girl who is the victim of rape or incest, and pregnant against her will. But I, too, am a democrat. The people voted in 1983 to insert an equal right to life of a mother and her unborn child into our Constitution, and now, thirty years later, we giving effect to that right. Nothing more. But nothing less either.
The debate about this legislation – about giving effect to this Constitutional right of women – has, at times, been fraught. A lot of people in this House and outside it, on both sides of the argument, hold very sincere personal views, and I respect that.
What we are being asked, as legislators is a very narrow question, but it could not be more important. That question is whether we believe that a woman has an equal right to life, as set out in the Constitution. And the answer, as expressed by this Government, in this legislation, is yes she does.
This Bill is the product of lengthy consideration. The considered work of an Expert Group, drawn in the main from medical and legal experts. Their report, the subject of substantive consideration by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, and by the Government. Careful and respectful consideration of the Heads of Bill by the same Oireachtas Committee. Input by many interested parties. Careful drafting and preparation of the Bill. And now thoughtful discussion of it here in the Oireachtas.
This is the right thing to do, for the women of our country, and I, and my Labour colleagues, will be voting for this Bill tomorrow.