Irish lawmaker: "You Could Arrest Me And Give Me 14 Years… But You Won’t" [View all]

[StevieM]

“I’m stunned by the presence of those who think it’s so important for half the population that they’ve turned up and bothered to stay for this debate. We’ll see, as the evening progresses, how many of them stay away and how many of them turn up. But my guess is that it’s shame and mortification on U-turns that’s keeping most of them away and mortification on being called out on their own hypocrisy. And mortification and shame on the question of how women in this country have been treated and remain to be treated.

And I just quote one of them, known to this house, a woman called Amanda Mellet, who suffered from fatal foetal abnormality, and whom the UN human rights committee really attacked the Sate and this country, for cruel, inhumane, degrading treatment and discrimination, in violation of article 7 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and, just to quote Amanda, ‘I still suffer from complicated grief and unresolved trauma, not from the termination but from the way I was forced to have it’.

I hope the day will soon come when women in Ireland will be able to access the health services they need in their own country where we can be with our loved ones, with our medical team and where we have our own familiar bed to go home and cry in. Subjecting women to so much additional pain and trauma must not continue. And I’m telling you, on that side of the house tonight, that’s exactly what you’re doing – with your tricks and your obfuscation and your twisting to push this bill down the road by a year.

You are forcing more Amanda Mellets to more pain and more trauma and I hope that’s as far as it goes because if there’s another Savita Halappanavar within the next year, then you’ll have to think long and hard about your position. We have a historical opportunity, for the first time in 33 years, to rid this country, and particularly women of this country, of literally a chain around their ovaries and their bodies and their lives. That amendment was put in to the constitution when I was a young woman, along with you Finian, Deputy McGrath, we were out campaigning against it.

We now have a historical opportunity to undo that, and why? Because we have those young people [points to the public gallery], we have those young woman who weren’t even born when that amendment was inserted into the constitution. And they want the right to be able to say how they live their lives, how they control their bodies, what this government has to say to them. They never had a vote on whether that amendment should stay in the constitution or not and your amendment to our bill tonight, to kick it down the road at least one whole year, means that they probably won’t get that chance in the lifetime of this government, if the government lasts that time. And you’ve just guaranteed that to them.

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2016/10/25/you-could-arrest-me-and-give-me-14-years-but-you-wont/