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Updated 8.27pm
THE DÁIL HAS voted down United Left TD Clare Daly’s bill to provide for abortions in circumstances where there is a fatal foetal abnormality.
The bill was rejected by 104 votes to 20.
Only one Labour TD, Anne Ferris, defied the government to support the proposed legislation. The Wicklow deputy’s vote means she is automatically expelled from the Labour parliamentary party and becomes an independent TD.
Speaking to reporters outside Leinster House this evening, Ferris said she felt “very bad” for having gone against her party, but said it was “an issue very, very close to my heart”.
Ferris said she intended to remain a Labour member, reapply to the parliamentary party and run for the party in Wicklow at the next general election. She added that she did not see herself voting against the party again.
“I’m as loyal to the Labour party as ever,” Ferris insisted.
There was earlier speculation that Ferris’s party colleague Ciara Conway was also planning to vote against Labour. However the Waterford TD ended up opposing the bill.
The four Labour TDs who missed the vote were said to have been granted permission to do so by the party whip Emmet Stagg.
After the vote, the Clare TD Michael McNamara said he would introduce his own bill to provide for terminations where the foetus has no prospect of life outside the womb. The move is likely to heap further pressure on the Labour party if the bill makes it to the Dáil floor.
Three Fianna Fáil TDs - Billy Kelleher, Niall Collins and Robert Troy – supported the bill with all else opposed. Sinn Féin abstained on the vote.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Six One News, Daly said the vote was “another example of the total disconnect between the Dáil and what goes on outside”.
She said that voting against the bill was “a shameful abandonment of the families who were crying outside the Dáil”.
The vote followed a lengthy meeting of the Labour parliamentary party in Leinster House this afternoon. The party was given legal advice by minister Alex White, who is a trained barrister, that Daly’s bill was unconstitutional as the Attorney General had advised the government last week.
Several Labour TDs and Senators spoke during the meeting which lasted for over two hours. Ferris is said to have made a passionate and emotional speech to her parliamentary colleagues before departing the meeting.
Speaking to reporters this evening, Tánaiste and Labour leader Joan Burton said the party has a long history of opposing the 8th amendment in the Constitution, which reads:
The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.
She said that Labour is “committed to dealing with the issue of fatal foetal abnormalities” and “the huge amount of distress and trauma it causes to individuals and families involved when they get the news”.
However, she added that the party as a member of Government, is “constitutionally-bound to put before the Dáil legislation which complies with the Constitution”.
She said it is “cruel to some of the families involved to suggest that legislation which doesn’t deal with the issue in a constitutional way would be passed”.
As for Ferris, Burton said she is a “very respected colleague”, adding that it’s up to her to apply to rejoin the party, something Labour will address “in the next few days”.
Daly’s bill would have provided for two suitably qualified medical professionals (an obstetrician and a perinatologist) to jointly certify in good faith that the foetus in question is suffering from a fatal foetal abnormality.
Proponents of it argued it does not confer any new rights in relation to abortion, merely clarifies existing rights and, they argue, it is constitutional.
However, speaking for the government last Friday, Health Minister Leo Varadkar said the bill was flawed legislation and would require a referendum which the government has no mandate to hold.
In a statement released this evening, the Terminations for Medical Reasons (TFMR) group said it is “devastated” by the defeat of the bill.
The organisation thanked all of the TDs who spoke in favour of the legislation, but sharply criticised the government for voting against it and Sinn Féin from abstaining.
“Because of the utter contempt with which we have all been treated by successive governments, but most particularly by this government, those who receive the terrible news [that their baby has a fatal foetal abnormality] this week, next week and into the future will continue to suffer as we have.
“We are calling upon all political parties who say they do not have an official position in relation to terminations of pregnancy in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities, to give us your written undertaking that you will discuss this specific topic at your next Ard Fheis.”
Additional reporting by Órla Ryan
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Joan Burton the peoples champion .
Don’t make me laugh.
iPhone Joan has completely lost her marbles recently.
The likelihood of her losing her seat too, shortly , has driven her temperament to the house for the bewildered.
That and the courting session that has begun between Enda & Mehole , which only confirms , that everyone now knows , that The Labour Party will be virtually nonexistent, following after the soon to be announced General Election!!!
As two faced as you can get,nothing genuine about her
Lads, why is Gerry less popular than iPhone Moanie Joanie in the opinion polls? Doesn’t make sense,
Well Empress Maria Louisa is simply looking after her support base… sure all teachers are on the Spin Feign ten cent payroll… look at them all out off the leash today… woof woof
I’d say it’s rigged!
Keep digging there iphone, everytime you open your mouth its another nail in labours coffin.
The Government are not listening to the people, they never did. When questioned by the opposition they simply ignore the question and make some silly unrelated waffle.
We are under the power of a dictatorship pure and simple, They don’t care about you or me or if your kids or mine are hungry or cold they have quangos to re fair you to for answers to those issues. They imposed a home tax and a water tax against the will of the people, Fine Gael and Labor never again Rotten shower of get rich quick opportunists.
I feel embarrassed for the people of Dublin West.
Goodbye Joan.
Let she who is without sin…..
do page 3.
Pic of Joan Burton clothed even would turn me off a newspaper for life
When the governments backs are against the wall, they seem to have only one plan: attack Sinn Féin.
Hundreds of people on trollers? Attack Sinn Féin.
Homeless people dying on our streets? Attack Sinn Féin.
Not representing the people who put them in power? Attack Sinn Féin.
The list of incompetence is endless.
*should read hundreds of people in trollies.
Not so smart iJoan burton must have requested a truthful comment about her to be deleted. What a pathetic inhumane individual. Delete away, doesn’t change the poor way she treats the people of Ireland.
As an erstwhile Labour voter – (I know, I know, but I am a working class person) – I come to bury JobBridge Joan, not to praise her. How this woman, who has connived in ,and indeed initiated, the most anti social and anti working class measures in this country since the 1920′s can criticize anyone, ANYONE, absolutely beggars belief. I hold no particular brief for Ms. McDonald, but this shameless bid to smear political opponents should not be allowed to pass unchallenged. Shame on you, you patronizing, multi pensioned baggage. LEAVE NOW, before you are dragged out of Leinster House and thrown in the gutter where you belong.
Oh, Pontius, that was a mere aside. Believe me, I have a whole lot more that I could say, but brevity being the soul…. and all that!
It is not just Joan. They all are doing it, especially when the marginalised party members speak (though it is difficult to think of SF as marginalised anymore, but in the Dail, they are). They attack the person. It is a strategy of FF/FG/Lab to attack people first and mmmmmmaybe, then, address the issue. It’s dysfunctional.
“Burton said she regularly visits both “well-off” schools and those in “poorer communities” through her job,”
Guess iJoan doesn’t visit schools in poorer communities as much as she use to, since she developed Globophobia.
If Joan Burton is saying Mary Luo is a saint then Joan must be a Satanist.
i like Mary Lou. She is a true Fianna Failer.
Bang on. What she is quoted as saying in the above article is pure mealy-mouthed blather.
I cant even stomach reading about Iphone Joan, never mind hearing her head melting voice. The sooner she is out of government the better,
CAN I JUST SAY bye bye joan! FOR THE PEOPLE
SF jumping on another bandwagon, I see.
There is zero mention of Junior Cert reform in SF’s manifesto from the last general election: http://www.sinnfein.ie/files/2011/SF_GeneralElectionManifesto2011.pdf
It seems a bit rich for a Labour TD to pass any remark on where people went to school…it seems to me that more than on of their own had a fee paying Education and at least one confirmed that was important by sending his children to fee paying schools?
St. Jude is Moanie Joan’s new Patron Saint.
Burton is a dipstick and will be political history soon enough
Labour getting their mojo back. About time.
Mojo? More like voodoo zombies.
Mojo?
Does that stand for Mad Old Joan?!
John, that was a goodie!! :-D
So they have at least 18 votes in 2016 then? Or are the green thumbers just being kind?
What a witch she is most hated person in the Country now her and Enda The people can not stand them any more
They has, has they?
Mary Lou is getting terrible crow’s feet and Joan looks like she’s melting. It’s time to get some attractive women in senior party positions. In the North, we have delights such as Arlene Foster, Naomi Long and Carál Ní Chúilín. Now they’re riding material.
It’s time to get casually sexist lads.. let’s all talk about women’s appearances and not mention once how the men look… except willie o’dea.. we have to mention him and his magnificent moustache. And doesn’t Micky Wallace’s beard look awful
I love a bit of casual sexism. Don’t be knocking it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2026450/One-teachers-bullied-online-parents-pupils.html
“Facebook and Twitter have been used to intimidate teachers over bad grades or simply because they are not liked.
More than a quarter of those that admit they have been targeted say the abuse has come from parents with one headteacher was driven to the brink of suicide by a year-long online hate campaign.
One parent even set up a ‘Google group’ and asked others to join in their abuse.”
Does the government not get it, when teachers mark their own students, then if the student gets a bad score who do you think their parents will take this out on, their child or the teacher?
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/mar/30/teachers-bullied-online
“More than one in seven teachers has been the victim of cyberbullying by pupils or parents, and almost half know a colleague who has been targeted, according to a survey published today.
Students have set up “hate” groups on social networking sites calling for specific teachers to be sacked and have even created fake profiles in their names containing defamatory information.”
http://www.exaronews.com/articles/5066/more-than-a-third-of-teachers-bullied-and-threatened-by-parents
Over 40% of teachers threatened by parents and .3% of 14,000 teachers was physical abuse by parents. This is what self assessing will do as it has happened in England and bringing this in here will do the same.
Parents are going to bully the teachers here because when their child is upset due to a poor or poorer grade they blame the teacher but this government do not care and all that this does is make teachers stop teaching and is that what the government wants?
http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2011/oct/03/bullying
“I am an ICT teacher and feel that I have to give students high marks or be labelled incompetent. There is nowhere in the system that you can bring this to light.”
“My health was so badly affected that I had no option but to leave.”
It will be the same here and the government does not care and when someone sticks up for the teachers, they get shot down why?
The fact is the government are bullies and they are promoting now the bullying of teachers and anyone who tries to make a point like Mary Lou is then attack by a person who acts like a bully?
I thought that Mary Lou would do a sit-in if she was really passionate about the rights of teachers.
iPhone Joan will have no prob getting job when she gets gate this year
“Haunting houses she will clean up”
Some mistake surely, shouldn’t Lairy Moo be compared to a martyr instead?
have your say