Clare Daly hits out at delay in dealing with fatal foetal abnormalities

Independents 4 Change TD Clare Daly has claimed it will be at least 2018 before any proposal to deal with cases of fatal foetal abnormality will be introduced, under the Government's citizens' assembly plan.

Ms Daly clashed with Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil, hitting out at the delay in dealing with the issue and claiming he was doing nothing.

But the Taoiseach told the Dublin Fingal TD that the Bill introduced by Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace to allow for terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities was flawed.

The Bill will be voted on in the Dáil today. “This Bill is not good for women. It’s bad for women and it’s inadequate,” Mr Kenny said. The Taoiseach added that he wanted to change the current situation, but in order to do that, “I have to build consensus, understanding and information for people who will have to vote if that be so, to change the Constitution one way or the other”.

The Taoiseach said they had put into the programme for government a process that could be gone through rationally, “taking into account the changing attitudes sensitivities of so many people”.

Ms Daly read from a letter which she had received from a woman who was pregnant at the same time as her sister. The woman said her sister’s baby died in the womb, she was medically assisted to deliver the baby, who was buried and the family mourned him.

Supports

The letter writer received a diagnosis of fatal foetal abnormality but would have none of the same supports as her sister.

“The dignity shown to the tiny corpse of my nephew on his first and final journey home, will not be extended to my son as he will have to be locked in the boot of a car on a ferry journey across the Irish Sea; or have his ashes delivered by courier weeks later along with the Amazon and Ebay purchases,” the woman said in the letter.

The Taoiseach told her “the services surrounding these events should be improved and we are trying to make arrangements that that be so”.

Ms Daly claimed the Government had four times ignored the UN’s demands that the State take action to deal with the issue of fatal foetal abnormality. Mr Kenny said that he too received such harrowing accounts from women. “This is our Ireland. It is an Ireland that is subject to a Constitution, which is voted on by the people”.

Interpreted

He said people voted in 1983 and a Constitutional amendment was introduced and it was interpreted by the Supreme Court.

He said that if a child was born for whatever short length of time, “Article 40.3.3 kicks in and that’s the challenge”.

Mr Kenny said that was why senior doctors believed Mr Wallace’s fatal foetal abnormality legislation “might have the principle right” but “the substance and the way it is phrased are grossly and wholly inadequate”.

But Ms Daly claimed the Taoiseach and the Government stood in the way when they tried to put a proposal to the Dáil to repeal the eighth Amendment on abortion.

She asked why the Taoiseach could not allow the courts to adjudicate on the issue.

Ms Daly said Mr Kenny’s “diktat to your backbenchers to obstruct this Bill is condemning hundreds of people to the continuation of torture because what you have proposed is nothing”.

Rejecting her claim, Mr Kenny said a central part of the programme for government contained a process for them to look and reflect carefully on the eighth amendment and what it means.