Southside government TDs split over abortion vote

Various Southside government TDs have shown a clear difference of opinion on abortion rights.

Last week, the Dáil voted to pass a Sinn Féin motion that ends the mandatory three-day wait for an abortion.

The motion came in the wake of a similar motion by the Social Democrats in May; on that occasion, Sinn Féin caught severe flak in progressive circles for abstaining on that vote.

On both occasions, the government parties allowed TDs a free vote on the issue; in May, Fianna Fáil TD Catherine Ardagh and Fine Gael TD Barry Ward voted in favour of the Soc Dems motion, which called for the three-day waiting period to be abolished and for the decriminalisation of medical professionals who carry out procedures.

On that occasion, Sinn Féin’s health spokesperson David Culinane claimed that the party did not have a consistent agreement on what constituted an “abnormal fetal anatomy” and did not agree with the decriminalisation element of the Soc Dem bill.

This week, however, and in a clear attempt to woo back socially progressive voters who bolted for the Social Democrats in May’s by-election in Dublin Central, Sinn Féin introduced a motion which called for an end to the mandatory three-day wait.

Once again, the government allowed a free vote, but before the vote took place on June 17th, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris announced they would be voting in favour of the Sinn Féin bill.

Southside government party TDs were divided on the issue, and a split has now emerged within the coalition on a delicate social issue.

Ardagh, recently promoted to Minister of State at the Department of Justice, once again voted to abolish the three-day wait, yet the Minister for Justice, Jim O’Callaghan, did not.

The Minister justified his decision by claiming he did not want to relitigate the Repeal campaign from 2018, despite the vote securing a two-thirds majority of the Irish electorate (66.4% to 33.6%).

Minister O’Callaghan claimed that he did not want to “unpick” the 2018 vote, despite his own constituency of Dublin Bay South having the highest “Yes” vote in the country, with 78.4% of voters in the constituency voting to liberalise Ireland’s abortion laws.

The most high-profile politician to vote in favour of lifting the three-day wait was Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill.

MacNeill voted against the Social Democrats’ bill in May, saying she had issues with the language used in their bill.

“If the Social Democrats Members are on the progressive left, then I am on the progressive right,” she stated in the initial debate.

The Dún Laoghaire TD took issue with the party wanting to decriminalise the practice within the context of healthcare professionals.

She had concerns that it would “set a precedent whereby we interfere in the medical profession in any area of clinical practice, whether it is obstetrics or cardiology.”

“I do not want to give a different Minister the opportunity to do something that would be very different from my worldview. I do not believe it is a concept we should embed in legislation,” she said at the time.

On this occasion, however, with that language removed from the Sinn Féin bill, Minister Carroll MacNeill voted in favour.

Hayes “angry and furious” at Fine Gael and Sinn Féin over abortion vote

Another high-profile Yes vote was Dublin Mid-West TD Emer Higgins, who serves as a Minister of State at the Department of Children, Disability, and Equality.

Speaking during the debate on the Sinn Féin bill, Higgins stated “there are some very practical and operational considerations and challenges involved in abolishing the three-day wait,” but said they are not “insurmountable.”

“However, I do have a responsibility to the House to be frank and to set them out. It is critical that when we are required to vote, we do so on the basis that we are making an informed choice.”

The Dublin Mid-West TD said, “fundamentally, we must acknowledge the difficulties that the mandatory waiting period can present for some women.”

“It may, in some circumstances, create an unnecessary delay once a clear and informed decision has been made. Some women have said that it creates practical challenges relating to travel, childcare, employment and other personal circumstances. Moreover, the additional appointments and administrative processes can push patients past gestational limits. These can pose particular difficulties for vulnerable groups and individuals,” she explained.

Minister Higgins implied that Ireland was out of step with modern medical practices regarding abortion.

“Health bodies such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation, take a clear and evidence-based position on mandatory waiting periods for termination of pregnancy,” she stated.

“The WHO, in its 2022 abortion care guideline, explicitly recommends against mandatory waiting periods, arguing that research shows that such delays offer no medical benefit and instead only restrict access to care and undermine service provision; these concerns are echoed by human rights bodies within the United Nations.”

She further noted that since Ireland voted to liberalise abortion laws in 2018, nations such as Spain, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have opted to remove the wait.

Fellow Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan cited the O’Shea report, an independent report commissioned by former Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly which looked to identify weaknesses in reproductive healthcare in Ireland.

The Dublin Bay South TD noted the report was “unequivocal” in its finding that there is no clinical basis for a mandatory three-day wait. 

“The report went on to identify as an unforeseen practical consequence of the three-day rule that women are timing out of care, particularly when scans, referrals, weekends or bank holidays intervene. The report, which is now three years out of date, cites how many women already face delays before presenting, whether due to miscalculating gestational age, work and family pressures, financial constraints, language and cultural barriers or domestic abuse.”

“The mandatory wait compounds those delays and can push women over the 12-week limit,” he noted.

Geoghegan’s change of heart on reproductive rights may come as a surprise to some; when Geoghegan first ran for the Dáil in the July 2021 by-election in Dublin Bay South, it emerged that the future Fine Gael TD had carried out polling for Renua, a social conservative party with a firm pro-life focus.

Renua, which has since faded from obscurity, was founded in 2013 by Southside TD Lucinda Creighton and was part of internal Fine Gael opposition towards the party going down a socially liberal path during their coalition with Labour.

Renua’s spot in Ireland’s politics, a party for social conservatives, has since been vacuumed up by Aontú (with that party being founded as a result from a split from Sinn Féin over Repeal).

Fine Gael’s shift towards social liberalism in the past decade can be best exemplified by Neale Richmond’s contribution to the debate.

“At the end of the day, somewhere around the country at this moment is a 14- or 15-year-old girl who has been raped and is being faced with a very serious decision. She does not need politicians, particularly male politicians, using her as a political football,” the Dublin Rathdown TD stated.

To Richmond’s point, the government party TDs who voted against lifting the wait were all male.

The Southside government TDs who voted in favour of the bill were: Catherine Ardagh, Colm Brophy, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, James Geoghegan, Emer Higgins, Maeve O’Connell, and Barry Ward.

The Southside government TDs who voted against the bill were: Shay Brennan, Cormac Devlin, John Lahart, Shane Moynihan and Jim O’Callaghan.

Opposition parties, who were split on the Soc Dems bill in May, showed a united front on this issue; all opposition party TDs who were present in the Dáil chamber voted for the Sinn Féin motion, which meant, with government party TDs’ support, the vote passed by 86 votes to 70.