“I hope as a country we can no longer tolerate a law which denies care and understanding to women who are our friends, our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our wives.”
In an impassioned speech in Dáil Éireann on Wednesday, Minister for Health Simon Harris went county-by-county, detailing the 3,625 women who travelled to England in 2016 for an abortion, calling it “a sad reality that we’ve been exporting this issue for decades.”
“These are not faceless women,” he noted.
Harris opened the Dáil debate on the Report of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment, where he said that he believes that the commencement of the debate will be viewed as “historic.”
The Minister informed the house that the fiercely-debated issue “challenges us to think about what kind of a country we want to be and what kind of a society we are.”
It is estimated, Harris contended, that “at least 170,000” Irish women have travelled to the United Kingdom for an abortion since the Eighth Amendment was introduced in 1983.
“Each crisis pregnancy is different,” he said. “And each involves a real woman facing a very difficult, and very personal decision.
“Real women, like the 36 from County Carlow who travelled to the UK for an abortion in 2016, or the 38 from Mayo, or the 69 women from Tipperary. The 85 women my own county of Wicklow. The 241 from Cork, or the 1,175 from Dublin.
“Women from every county in the Republic of Ireland travelled to the United Kingdom in 2016 to access an abortion, and I think we need to acknowledge them all.
“49 from Kerry, 130 from Kildare, 21 from Leitrim, 20 from Roscommon, 69 women from Wexford, 39 from Cavan, 15 from Monaghan, 99 from Limerick, 53 from Clare, 38 from Westmeath, 63 from Donegal, 113 women from Galway, 44 more women from Kilkenny, 42 from Laois, 83 from Louth, 100 from Meath, 28 from Offaly, 29 from Sligo, 16 from Longford, and 56 from Waterford.”
Harris also mentioned Ann Lovett, who died along with her newborn son at the age of 15 in 1985 underneath a statue of the Virgin Mary in County Longford.
He cited Lovett, along with the Magdalene Laundries and mother-and-baby homes as examples of Ireland’s treatment towards pregnant women.
Minister Harris told the Dáil that he expects to return to government with a series of proposals in the coming weeks, aiming to deliver a referendum by the end of May or early June.
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