I thank the Social Democrats for bringing forward this Bill, which People Before Profit supports. It really is the bare minimum the Government should be doing to implement the recommendations of its own official review of the abortion law. The review recommended decriminalising abortion, reviewing the treatment of fatal foetal anomalies in order that women in this terrible situation are not forced to travel and abolishing the patronising and medically useless three-day wait. The Bill mostly does all of that. There are details that could be ironed out on Committee Stage. We would prefer to abolish the three-day wait entirely rather than making it optional. Women are perfectly capable of taking as much time as they need to make their own decisions without needing for that to be legislated for. We also favour deleting section 23 in order that abortion is fully decriminalised in line with other medical procedures. People Before Profit would go further. Neither this Bill nor the official review actually gives pregnant people the right to choose. That right is still strictly time limited, ending abruptly at 12 weeks. That is regardless of when the woman finds out they are pregnant or even if they know that they pregnant at all. A relationship could break down after 12 weeks. Intimate partner violence - which happens in the case of one in eight pregnancies in Ireland - is more likely to begin during pregnancy. The woman could lose her job or become homeless. One of her other children could be diagnosed with a serious illness. She could find out that the foetus has a severe but non-fatal anomaly that means their child would need around-the-clock care for their whole life. None of that matters as far as our abortion law is concerned. Twelve weeks and that is it. After 12 weeks pregnant women in Ireland are still treated as vessels with no right to bodily autonomy, even though the foetus will not be viable for months. After 12 weeks, pregnant people are still forced to travel. The Government refuses to act. By 2030, over 1,300 women will be forced to travel. We have to stop that happening. We need a renewed abortion rights movement to do it. Just like Trump in the US, the far right here, the conservative politicians in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Aontú and Independent Ireland and many Independents want to take away women's hard-won rights. They want to turn them back into handmaidens. We have to take the fight to them, and that means fighting for the right to choose and nothing less.

Sentiment score: -0.03