I will start with a simple premise which I imagine will be repeated by other speakers today - eight years ago, Irish people voted overwhelmingly to repeal the eighth amendment. One of the central promises of that campaign, a promise that moved many people, was that women would no longer have to travel abroad when they received a devastating diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality. Today, eight years later, many women still have to make that traumatic journey. That is a starting point for this debate; it is not about ideology or politics. The 2018 Act contained a provision for a review to take place after three years. That review happened. Marie O'Shea conducted it. She found serious systemic problems. That was three years ago. The Oireachtas has not acted since. The Bill before the House is designed to fix three of those problems, the first being that the mandatory three-day waiting period has no basis in medical evidence. The WHO is unambiguous on this. It recommends against mandatory waiting periods, finding no evidence of benefit and clear evidence of harm. Some 98% of women who attend services proceed after the wait. It does not change minds, it just delays care. It disproportionately punishes women who are already vulnerable, women in rural Ireland, women in abusive relationships, women who can least afford another trip, another day off work, another arrangement. The 28-day rule forces clinicians to predict with certainty how long a baby will survive after birth. That is not something medicine can reliably do and because clinicians cannot certify, some women are then turned away. They are forced to travel. They go through one of the most devastating experiences of their lives alone abroad and that cannot continue. Ireland has a 14-year criminal sanction on medical practitioners. It is one of only three countries in Europe at that level. The WHO recommends full decriminalisation. That sanction creates fear in our hospitals. It drives conservative decision-making in grey areas and causes harm. I will be clear about what we are asking for today. We are not asking for everybody to support every line of the Bill in its final form. We are asking for it to go to Committee Stage in order to scrutinise it, test it and amend it where needed. Where a Government-commissioned review has already found systematic failures in primary legislation, refusing further scrutiny is not a neutral act. That is a choice to leave things as they are. Leaving things as they are means more women travelling, and we were elected to do better than that.

Sentiment score: -0.13