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'Ploy' Admission By Former TD

The three-day wait between requesting an abortion and it being carried out was designed to overcome “resistance” to liberalising Ireland’s abortion laws, an architect of the measure has confirmed.

Last month, deputies backed a Sinn Féin Bill to remove this three-day reflection period by 86 votes to 70. The proposal will now be considered by an Oireachtas committee.

And now Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher, who was the party’s health spokesman during the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment in 2018, has admitted the safeguard was only added to placate those on the fence, and said he would vote in favour of ditching it were he still in the Dáil.

Kelleher, a member of the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment and a proponent of abortion up to 12 weeks, said: “There was always a view that the three days was something to look at and discuss again, because it was put in to maybe get people to look at the 12 weeks as a reasonable proposal.

“Three days was introduced to bring more people on to the side of supporting a referendum to remove the Eighth Amendment.”

The Pro Life Campaign commented: “Even if the three-day waiting period was introduced for cynical political reasons, you might have expected Kelleher and others to recognise its value by now, given the lives it has unquestionably saved. Instead, they want it removed.”

Deeply Flawed Suicide Bill Reintroduced

The Labour party is making another ill-concealed effort to bring back euthanasia. Lauren Edwards MP has published her assisted suicide Bill in near-identical form to the much criticised Leadbeater Bill from the previous parliamentary session, retaining dozens of serious flaws identified by Royal Colleges, professional bodies, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and disability, mental health and domestic abuse charities. 

By publishing a near-identical Bill to the much-criticised version that failed in the previous parliamentary session, the Bill’s supporters have made clear their intention to use the Parliament Acts to bypass the House of Lords to force the Bill into law should the Lords fail to pass the Bill again. 

The ability to use the Parliament Acts not only requires the Bill to be brought back in a near-identical form, but also means that it could not be amended in the House of Commons, making it impossible for MPs to amend the Bill in the House of Commons to fix the dozens of widely-publicised flaws in the Bill.

The Second Reading vote on the revived Bill on 11 September will now be a referendum on the use of the Parliament Acts for a controversial Private Members’ Bill, as well as on the assisted suicide Bill to which MPs will not be able to make amendments. This means September’s vote will be a very different proposition to the previous Second Reading vote on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill.

As only 12 MPs need to change their minds for the new assisted suicide Bill to fall, and since seven MPs from Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who had backed the previous Bill at Third Reading have already said they do not support plans to force it into law via the Parliament Acts / bringing back the Bill in this new Parliamentary session, Lauren Edwards now faces an uphill battle to pass the Second Reading vote on 11 September.