Expansion of abortion services bill passes Dáil vote

With just one-in-10 Irish GPs providing abortion services five years after the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, a Private Member’s Bill introduced by Bríd Smith TD that aims to fully decriminalise abortion and remove the three-day wait and 12-week limit has progressed through the Dáil Second Stage.

With government TDs given a free vote on People Before Profit TD Smith’s Bill, the Government was defeated 67-64, with eight abstentions and 11 government TDs voting with Smith. A previous amendment brought by Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly TD to freeze the bill for a year had been defeated 74-61, with government TDs also voting with the opposition in that case.

Smith’s Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) (Amendment) Bill 2023, if passed, will amend the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 and fully decriminalise abortion, provide for abortion on request prior to foetal viability, abolish the three-day waiting period for abortion, allow for abortion on grounds of fatal foetal abnormality that are likely to lead to the death of the foetus either before or within a year of birth, and allow for abortion where there is a risk to the life, or of serious harm to the health, of the pregnant woman.

Chief among the reasons for Donnelly – who has stated that Smith’s Bill “goes miles beyond what people voted for [in 2018]” – attempting to freeze the bill for one year was his wish to study the findings of a review of abortion services by the barrister Marie O’Shea. O’Shea’s report found that half of the State’s counties have fewer than 10 GP contracts for the provision of abortion and that nine counties have fewer than five, with both Longford and Monaghan having only one each.

The report called for the expansion of services, noting that roughly 90 per cent of GPs and eight out of 19 hospitals do not provide abortion services under the current law. The Cabinet has been told that a further four hospitals will commence provision of services in 2023. In terms of the ratio of GPs providing abortion to the population, Wicklow has the lowest, with one GP providing abortion for every 7,404 of population, while Monaghan has the highest, with one per 64,832 people.

Giving evidence to the Oireachtas Health Committee on the matter, O’Shea stated that she found comments made by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD and Tánaiste Micheál Martin TD, that echoed Donnelly’s sentiments regarding the 2018 vote, to be “disconcerting” and “disappointing”. “I think it is reasonable to say that among the 66.4 per cent of those who voted in favour of repeal of the Eighth Amendment were people who would have been influenced by the scope of the proposed regulations.”