Abortion issue not to be answered with one word or Bill - Harris

The controversial issue of abortion cannot be answered “with one word or three words or one Bill”, Minister for Health Simon Harris has told the Dáil.

He declined to give a second hearing to the AAA-PBP Bill to provide for a referendum to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution on abortion, which puts the right to life of the unborn on an equal footing with that of the mother.

He said the Citizens’ Assembly should be allowed to conclude its deliberations and make its recommendations.

“Tabling a referendum Bill is the easy part,” he said. “Telling the Irish people what would replace that constitutional amendment in law or elsewhere is the difficult work we have to do.”

He was not satisfied with the situation where the constitutional amendment had caused much hardship and uncertainty for women facing crisis pregnancies and for healthcare professionals.

“I would like to change this situation as soon as possible” but they could not ignore “the significant policy and legal issues involved”.

“Simply deleting it raised significant implications for medical practice and the ethical codes of professional regulatory bodies.

“Simply deleting it takes no account of the differences of opinion in our society.”

Tribute

Mr Harris also paid tribute to women who had come forward and told their very personal stories.

Recognising the “deeply held principles” held by TDs, he said “I cannot do those women the disservice of pretending this question can be answered with one word or three words, or one Bill”.

Mr Harris was responding to AAA-PBP TD Ruth Coppinger who, introduced the Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Repeal of the Eighth Amendment) Bill.

Ms Coppinger said the Dáil and the electorate were very clear that Fine Gael and the Independent Alliance were, in effect, opposing the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

She said the repeal would not happen until 2018 at the earliest when the Government was unlikely to be in existence.

Ms Copppinger said Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, were the architects of the amendment in 1983.

“What will enrage many women and young people is that Independents who were elected on a platform of repealing the amendment, are now buckling under a whip and kicking this issue to touch,’’ she added.

“So women must wait and, also, must so many young people, impatient to downgrade the church’s grip on people’s lives.’’

Bodily autonomy

Ms Coppinger said the issue was about bodily autonomy. “The key point is we must keep women’s bodies out of the Constitution,’’ she added.

Her party colleague Bríd Smith said there was a poor attendance in the Dáil chamber for the debate, adding the reason was shame and mortification because of the U-turns made on the issue.

“We have an historical opportunity, for the first time in 33 years, to rid the women of this country of a chain around their ovaries,’’ she added.

Fianna Fáil health spokesman Billy Kelleher warned that there should be no prevarication on the issue. He said the Citizens’ Assembly should not be used to “string this out” but that decisions should be made once the assembly had reported on the issue.

Fine Gael TD Kate O’Connell warned the AAA-PBP that if they were “hell-bent on destabilising this Government and rejecting its efforts to civilly address the Eighth” supporters of Fianna Fáil, the likely replacement, were most in favour of retaining the Eighth Amendment.