Anger over five-year delay to safe access zone legislation for abortion services

A cross party group of senators, TDs, and campaigners from Together For Safety in support of the Safe Access To Termination of Pregnancy Bill at Leinster House on Kildare Street, Dublin. Picture: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos

A letter raising serious concerns over delays to safe access zone legislation has been sent to the Oireachtas Health Committee by advocacy group Together for Safety.

The legislation is designed to protect women and pregnant people from harassment and intimidation when accessing a termination but has yet to be enacted.

The letter, sent to committee chair Sean Crowe, says May will see the fifth anniversary of the vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment, supported by 66.4% of voters.

“We are now five years being told that safe access zones are imminent,” the letter says.

“Five years of being harassed, abused, and intimidated as we go to medical appointments. Five years of our privacy being violated, our grief manipulated, our medical decisions commented on, our losses politicised.” 

Signed by Together for Safety co-chairs Karen Sugrue and Yvie Murphy, the letter continues:

We implore you and your colleagues on the Health Committee to use all the powers at your disposal to push for extreme urgency with the safe access zone legislation that we have been promised so many times — and five years on we are still pleading for."

The legislation, General Scheme of the Health (Termination of Pregnancy (Safe Access Zone) Bill, will set up exclusion zones around medical facilities providing terminations.

This is expected to be a 100m radius and would cover all GP practices, as well as maternity hospitals and family planning clinics.

It is hoped this will protect women accessing such services, as well as service providers and their staff.

The letter notes the work already gone into bringing this forward.

“The legislation is written, gardaí consulted, the HSE on board, unions fully behind it, TDs and senators across all parties and none fighting for it.

"Civil society groups calling for it, national and international rights groups demanding it, 88% of the general public fully behind it, and traumatised women and pregnant people begging for it,” the letter says.

“But still, after five years of promises, we have no safe access zones and we have to wonder, with all that support, why it is not progressing?”.

This follows a meeting of the National Women’s Council Ireland abortion working group, where Together for Safety was given full backing by members in calling for immediate implementation of the safe access zone legislation.