Martin abortion stance failing Irish people

THE announcement by the leader of my party, Micheál Martin, in the Dáil last week that he favours repeal of the Eighth Amendment, the constitutional protection for unborn babies and their mothers, came as a shock to me and many within Fianna Fáil.

Mr Martin (pictured above) is entitled to have a view on this important issue as much as any other citizen. However, his position as leader of the Opposition makes him more than just another commentator. He has a particular duty to the people of this country to hold the Government to account. He has failed in this duty. I was disappointed to hear him congratulate the Oireachtas committee on gathering evidence from “a wide range of sources” when he knows that the committee was deeply biased and overwhelmingly selected speakers who are wellknown advocates for abortion.

The Oireachtas committee spent no time considering the tens of thousands of lives saved by the Eighth Amendment. It didn’t invite in women who might have gone ahead with abortion were it available in the nearest hospital but didn’t and today couldn’t countenance not having their child as part of their family. The committee didn’t consider the women who have been through abortion and regretted it, nor did it hear about the risk of abortion – physical or mental – for women. The committee spent no time on looking at positive alternatives to abortion or positive supports for women experiencing unplanned pregnancy.

As a woman in political life, I was very annoyed that contributions of these women were sidelined and excluded and my party leader should not have remained silent about this.

Mr Martin made reference to the Irish women who travel to Britain to have abortions, but what he did not say is that the numbers have been falling for many years as Ireland has become a more compassionate place for women.

In my work as a public representative, I regularly meet women who have had unexpected or difficult pregnancies and it is patronising to tell these women that ending the pregnancy will end the problem. Women contemplating abortion need our support – in my experience, abortion only creates more victims and deepens the pain.

Retaining the Eighth Amendment will mean that Ireland will continue to be a world leader in healthcare for pregnant women. Mr Martin was ready to criticise the care given in Irish hospitals (something we should always work to improve), yet he completely ignored the fact that Ireland, without abortion, was found by the World Health Organisation to have among the lowest level of maternal deaths in the world.

Considering this fact, how can Mr Martin claim that the Eighth Amendment causes “real damage”?

Before we rush to change our laws to copy other countries, we need to ask some important questions about how abortion would work in practice. For

example, who will decide if an unborn child’s disability is “serious” or “fatal” and what happens where a child is born alive after an abortion? Are we ready to change our medical practice of saving critically ill unborn babies?

And what about looking at how abortion legislation has served our nearest neighbours? There are nearly 200,000 abortions a year in England and Wales – that’s one in five pregnancies. In 2015, 98pc of these were performed for social reasons. Does Mr Martin believe that Ireland should go down the same road?

Our party leader didn’t ask any of these questions. Instead, he let the Government off the hook and said that there was “no basis” for comparisons with other countries.

IN every parliament in the world, when you consider changing your laws, one of the most basic steps is to look at the experience of other countries. Mr Martin knows this – he did it all the time when he was the minister for health.

However, in this case he is choosing to ignore the evidence from Denmark, Iceland and other countries where abortion has resulted in a dramatic reduction of children born with various disabilities, in particular Down Syndrome. For Mr Martin to help the Government get away with ignoring this evidence is troubling.

We did not hear about the experience of women who were told by doctors that their baby would die shortly after birth and were pressured into travelling for an abortion.

This is exactly what happened for baby Grace McBreen, whose mother Sinéad was told to end the pregnancy and “get on with life”.

Today, Grace is a happy fouryear-old. Doctors cannot predict the future; how many children like Grace will be aborted if the Eighth Amendment is removed? This question was never asked.

My party leader described the constitutional protection in the Eighth Amendment as “cruel and inflexible”, yet expert analysis has shown that there are over 100,000 people alive today – some possibly reading this newspaper – that may not have lived if the Eighth Amendment was not present. 100,000 people. That’s the population of Galway city and its hinterland.

The world is a better place because people like Grace McBreen are alive. If we do not protect the right to life in our Constitution, along with all our other important rights, we will lose something precious. Mr Martin has changed his mind on abortion, and ignored the wishes of the grassroots members of his party and many members of the parliamentary party. That is his decision, but his duty as leader of the Opposition is to consider all sides of this debate, and sadly there is no evidence he has done this.

The people of Ireland, born and unborn, deserve better from their elected leaders.