Some in SF are not on board with Yes vote, says Mary Lou

MARY Lou McDonald has said she accepts there are members of Sinn Féin who are ‘struggling with’ the party’s pro-repeal stance on abortion and are ‘not on the same page’.

However, Ms McDonald said she respects the views of those within her party, and outside of it, who are not in favour of legalising abortion.

The Sinn Féin leader was speaking yesterday as she was joined by TD Pearse Doherty to launch the party’s referendum campaign, advocating for a Yes vote on May 25.

Ms McDonald earlier this week addressed the party’s treatment of two pro-life TDs – Carol Nolan, who has been temporarily suspended from the party, and Peadar Tóibín – who both attended a ‘republican, pro-life’ event in recent days.

Ms McDonald said Ms Nolan was outside ‘the parliamentary party because she voted against party policy in the context of legislation here in the Dáil chamber’. She also said she ‘would prefer Peadar was not speaking out in this way’.

However, Ms McDonald said she wouldn’t censor the views of others in the party.

Speaking to the Irish Daily Mail, she said: ‘I respect people that have other views; I am not in the business of censoring that... But the Sinn Féin position is what you are hearing and what you see now. And we respect the fact that there are people – including within Sinn Féin – who struggle with this and aren’t on the same page, and that’s OK.’

She added: ‘I don’t believe that those who voted to put the Eighth Amendment into the Constitution in 1983 ever intended for women to die, but women have died and have suffered serious health consequences.’