“You could mansplain in person, perhaps. Tip around to everyone’s house and have a chat,” Kate O’Connell quipped to Peadar Tóibín during the third and final day of the Select Committee on Health deliberation on the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Bill. The Fine Gael TD had effectively summed up the tone of the amendments brought forward by ten anti-abortion TDs. With the committee stage over the Bill now heads to the report stage and we are one step closer to abortion being more widely available in Ireland.
Of the 180 amendments tabled, both pro-choice and anti-abortion, only one was accepted. This was expected, but for anti-abortion TDs the point wasn’t to get their amendments passed. It was to spend their speaking time rehashing issues that the electorate rejected by voting in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment on May 25th.