Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. No woman who lived under the shadow of the eighth amendment will ever forget its impact. Many of us will recall the X case, the A, B and C case, the PP case and the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar. We all know that there are thousands of other women who were harmed and whose lives were deeply impacted by Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion between 1983 and 2018. Thousands had to travel abroad for necessary healthcare. In later years, many self-medicated with pills purchased online and far too many, in the early years, had to resort to using underground phone lines to get abortion information. As students union president in Trinity in 1989, I will never forget taking calls from women and girls in crisis pregnancy who were seeking the phone numbers of abortion clinics in England and had nowhere else to turn. Women who were panicked and desperate would describe their terror to me. Their bodies were no longer their own. Their futures were no longer their own. Due to the eighth amendment, they had to resort to calling a Trinity student’s phone line to ask for help. After many decades of campaigning, we succeeded in repealing the eighth amendment in 2018 and in legalising abortion here. That was very welcome but far too many women are still travelling. At least 1,500 have done so since 2019. Women across Ireland are still feeling the loneliness of rejection by their own health service, so we must address the barriers to accessing necessary reproductive healthcare. Resources are not the issue. The constitutional ban is gone. What is preventing women from getting the care they need is political squeamishness and cowardice.

Sentiment score: -0.20

It is a residual, insulting, patriarchal mistrust of women that forms the basis of the mandatory three-day wait and the Government's unwillingness to engage with the evidence that other change is needed. I welcome the Taoiseach's confirmation that he will vote in support of the Private Members' Bill to remove the three-day wait on Second Stage tonight, but even if that reform is introduced, it will not be enough. It will not be enough, in particular, for women who receive a devastating diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality and who still have to travel abroad because of the unnecessarily restrictive provisions in the current law. The Taoiseach asked barrister Marie O’Shea to lead a review into how abortion care was working in Ireland. Her report was published three years ago. From that moment, he and his colleagues were on notice the system was failing women and that arbitrary and paternalistic processes were failing women and, indeed, doctors. Therefore, we need to go further than removing the mandatory three-day wait. We need urgent reform of the overly restrictive provisions on fatal foetal anomaly and implementation of all the recommendations from Marie O’Shea’s report. The three-day wait is just one serious obstacle and women cannot wait any longer for it to be repealed, so can we have a timeline for this change? None was forthcoming from the Government yesterday. Three years on from the O’Shea review, when will we see all of her recommendations implemented to deliver effective reproductive care and abortion rights?

Sentiment score: -0.08

I absolutely acknowledge the progress that has been made since 2018 and since the legislation commenced in 2019, but we still have to acknowledge we are failing far too many women.

Sentiment score: -0.53

Fifteen hundred women is not a small number, and in each situation, there are really difficult circumstances. I am glad that we are seeing a change of heart from the Government on the three-day waiting period after years of insisting that, because it was inserted into draft legislation late in the campaign just prior to the vote, the Government was prevented from looking to abolish it. I welcome the Taoiseach's change of heart on this but supporting this modest measure through the first stage of a multi-phase legislative process is not enough. We need a timeline for its passage into law, if indeed Government is going to support that. We also need to see the crucial change on fatal foetal anomaly. I am looking at Marie O'Shea's report. She talks about the challenges in clinical practice and the potentially unfair outcomes for parents arising from implementing the current section. I have spoken with doctors and with women and couples affected. We need to acknowledge the language in that section needs change. That is another crucial part of the reforms necessary to guarantee women and their partners decent healthcare.

Sentiment score: 0.02