The passage of Bríd Smith’s abortion bill at Second Stage in the Dáil on Wednesday evening was very disappointing but not an altogether surprising development. 

The bill passed by 67 votes to 64 with 8 abstentions. It still has to move through committee stage before a final vote on the bill can happen - something most commentators are of the view won’t come to pass. As pro-life supporters, however, we can’t pin our hopes on such speculation. We can’t afford to leave anything to chance and must mobilise in force to ensure this horrific bill never becomes law, or any version of it that the Government might try to bring forward.

Smith’s bill, if passed into law, would among other things permit abortion on request throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy.  

Even if the bill progresses no further, it’s still tragic and alarming that we’ve reached a point where 67 TDs are prepared to vote for something that would allow a baby to be killed in such a dreadful way right up to the moment of birth. The same TDs who voted for Bríd Smith’s bill voted against Carol Nolan’s bill in 2021 that would have ensured babies were given humanitarian pain relief prior to their lives being ended in late term abortions. 

Senior government ministers like Catherine Martin and Roderic O'Gorman, who voted for Smith’s bill on Wednesday, need to be challenged on how they can stand over voting for abortion on request up to birth and in the same breath oppose these same babies being shown a morsel of mercy by providing precautionary pain relief to safeguard against them dying in excruciating pain. 

The euphemisms and genteel word games that pro-abortion campaigners use were also on full display at Wednesday’s meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Health Committee where they discussed the recently published report of the three-year review of the abortion law. The Chair of the review Marie O’Shea BL and Dr Catherine Conlon, who conducted the UnPAC study as part of the review, were guest witnesses at the meeting. Almost every sentence uttered by committee members and witnesses alike was peppered with terms like “abortion care”, “evidence based findings” and adhering to “World Health Organisation best practice.” But when it came to specifics on the issue of evidence, the cupboard was completely bare. 

For example, the entire justification for recommending the scrapping of the three-day reflection period before an abortion was completely blown apart when Marie O’Shea admitted under questioning from Peadar Tóibín TD that she never spoke to any of the nearly 4,000 women who between 2019 and 2021 went for their first abortion appointment but didn’t go through with the abortion after the three-day wait had elapsed.

It was also highly inappropriate for the Chair of the review to personally push at the meeting for specific changes to the law on abortion. Saying that “a bit more courage” from the Taoiseach in bringing forward legislative change “wouldn’t go amiss” was an appalling remark for her to make and puts paid once and for all to any suggestion that the review she oversaw was independent and impartial. TDs Michael McNamara and Seán Kyne also asked some interesting and helpful questions to the Chair of the review about freedom of conscience rights and the three-day reflection period.

It’s been a tough and troubling week for the pro-life movement. There’s no escaping that. But as is often the case, what was presented in public is not the full story. It was interesting for example to observe the number of remarks on Twitter in recent days from some very unlikely sources expressing annoyance and dismay at the push for wider access to abortion and the breaking of promises that were made prior to the referendum that dismantled the Eighth Amendment. Conflicted ‘Yes’ voters from 2018 have been very quiet over the past five years but in recent weeks they have slowly started to make their concerns known. The Bríd Smith’s of this world will never reappraise the direction they’re going in out of concern for what these ‘middleground’ voters are thinking. But it’s an entirely different matter for the main parties in government. They need to hear from us loudly and clearly that no legislative changes to broaden the grounds for abortion are acceptable based on the recommendations of the review.

This past week has been another wake up call on what can happen seemingly out of the blue. But it has also been a week that exposed the most extreme elements of the pro-abortion movement and showed how empty and vacuous the “evidence based” claims are from the drafters of the report of the three-year review. 

Wednesday evening’s vote will hopefully prompt many more people to rethink their stance on the issue and join us in trying to bring some balance and humanity back to the debate. We are already experiencing a noticeable uptick in numbers contacting us to get involved. 

As we said in our press release after Wednesday's Dáil vote, we will work day and night to ensure Bríd Smith’s bill progresses no further. 

We must ensure as well that abortion becomes a major election issue and do everything in our power to get more pro-life TDs elected to the Dáil.

Nothing should deter or throw us of course from the vitally important work we are doing in defence of the most vulnerable. Each one of us has to play our part in this regard.

See how your local TDs voted here

Watch Senator Mullen’s excellent contribution in the Seanad on Thursday here