TDs should be ashamed of latest move on abortion

FOR too long, Irish politicians relied on abortion services in Britain to provide ‘an Irish solution to an Irish problem’ for women with crisis pregnancies.

As part of the abortion legislation now going through the Oireachtas, a small group of TDs is trying to introduce a new criminal offence for a woman not to have a burial or a cremation after an abortion, irrespective of when or where the medical procedure takes place.

This is a naked attempt to import a ‘solution’ from the American antiabortion lobby to what these TDs clearly see as the problem of the Irish electorate having voted by a landslide for provision to be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancies in Ireland.

How do they propose to enforce this amendment? Will the guards be asked to make house calls on women who have taken GP-prescribed abortion pills at home, to inspect the outcome and ensure the forced funeral law is upheld?

What will be the criminal sanctions imposed on the women and doctors paraded through the courts for noncompliance?

The referendum result in May this year signalled an end to the decades of shaming and stigmatising people who need access to abortion services.

The TDs attempting to bring in this law should be ashamed of themselves. Breda Corish

London (formerly of Kerry, Limerick and Dublin)