Dáil committee votes to change the Eighth Amendment
AN Oireachtas committee has voted not to retain the Eighth Amendment in full after weeks of hearings.
The vote was carried last night by 15 votes to three with two abstentions.
Fianna Fáil’s Lisa Chambers said that the result of the vote showed that the status quo could not remain.
The proposal not to retain Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution was made by Sinn Féin and seconded by Fianna Fáil.
Two members of Fianna Fáil, James Browne and Anne Rabbitte, abstained.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath, Senator Rónán Mullen and Fine Gael TD Peter Fitzpatrick voted against the proposal.
Mr Mullen said the committee had voted to ‘take away the rights of the unborn’ and he labelled it a ‘farce’.
The committee will now have to choose between a number of options in the event of next year’s referendum on the Eighth Amendment passing, one of which is to insert limited legislation which allows for abortion in cases of rape or incest. The Government has indicated that the referendum will be held in May or June 2018.
It comes after further hearings yesterday in which one of the country’s leading obstetricians said that the people of Ireland should be asked ‘a simple binary question on whether or not to repeal the Eighth Amendment’.
And Dr Peter Boylan told the committee and the public: ‘You have to act now.’
He pointed out that it is only Ireland and Malta that do not have some form of access to terminations for women. The former master of the National Maternity Hospital said that if it wasn’t for the access that Irish women have to the UK, there would be ‘an epidemic of illegal abortions and a massive increase in maternal mortality’.
Dr Boylan, chair of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said that the Eighth Amendment has caused great harm and even death to women. He high- lighted the ‘bizarre situation’ whereby the 13th Amendment to the Constitution allows women to travel to find an abortion, and the 14th Amendment allows them to get access to information about abortions, but getting an abortion in Ireland is subject to a criminal prosecution. In terms of access to abortion across the EU, he said ‘99% of women in the EU live in countries where their legislatures have grasped the nettle of termination of pregnancy.’
He said only Malta, Ireland and Poland did not allow for terminations where there is a risk to the life and health of the woman, or where there has been a rape or a fatal foetal abnormality. He said: ‘I suggest that the Eighth Amendment is unworkable. When it was enacted 34 years ago, neither the world wide web nor the abortion pill had been invented.’
In relation to abortion pills, and the fact that some women now order them online, he said the ‘genie is out of the bottle’ and it means the issue needs to be addressed.
Much discussion had revolved around the issue of pregnancy as a result of rape,
Mr Boylan said that this could be ‘dealt with in a straightforward way by legislating for the legal prescription of the abortion pill’, adding that ‘women should be taken at their word’.
Dr Boylan was giving evidence alongside Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, a professor of obstetrics who headed up a review into Savita Halappanavar’s death.
He said that, in his view, abortion is ‘life saving in certain health conditions’.
‘The Eighth is unworkable’