Heated exchanges during abortion debate at Joint Oireachtas Committee

A pro-life GP who was making an address to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health discussion on the abolition of the three-day wait rule for abortion cited a Westmeath court case to highlight opposing points to the proposed legislation change.

There was a rigorous discussion at the Health Committee as it heard opposing viewpoints from members and witnesses about the mandatory three-day waiting period under current abortion legislation.

Two pro-life GPs were called as witnesses to the hearing.

Dr Andrew O’Regan told the committee: “I know from professional experience as a doctor and from published statistics that the three-day reflection period has given pregnant women considering abortion the time to reflect and to draw on available supports empowering them to make fully informed decisions at a critical juncture in their lives.

“It is an undeniable fact that children are alive today because of this three-day wait.”

He cited HSE statistics that show that more than 10,000 women who attended the first appointment did not attend again.

Dr Kirsten Fuller, who also appeared as a witness, said “since the abortion law took effect in 2019, there has been a massive increase in Irish abortions, with over 65,000 taking place to date”.

Dr Fuller expressed the opinion that a lot of women expressed abortion regret.

Chair of the Committee, Padraig Rice, asked Dr Fuller if she accepted that there was no clinical reason to retain the three-day wait, to which she replied, “I would argue that there’s something much more important… there are lives.”

Dr Fuller said she was attending “in a personal capacity as a GP with over 25 years of experience”.

In her questioning, Longford Westmeath TD, Sorca Clarke, asked Dr Regan if he recognised the legality of a woman’s entitlement to seek abortion under healthcare legislation: “That the three-day mandatory period poses a barrier, because of the timeline that is there, to her seeking that healthcare she has decided she wants for whatever reason that brought her to that point?

“Does he recognise the barrier that three-day wait poses for a woman of that gestation?”

Replying, Dr Fuller said: “It is a balance on what the state is going to view as more important.”

Cavan Aontú Senator, Sarah O’Reilly, said of the exchange between the elected representatives and the witnesses: “I think there is a very hostile atmosphere here and I do not believe they have been treated fairly.”

Senator O’Reilly asked: “If the contact between a woman and her doctor is reduced from two appointments to one, based on the witnesses’ knowledge, how would that be likely to affect whether a doctor would be able to identify women who are being coerced into abortion?”

In her reply Dr Fuller said: “I think there are two criminal cases before the court at the moment – really tragic cases – in Letterkenny and Mullingar.

“One woman describes how she was forced to take abortion pills and then locked in a room.

“Two visits to a doctor, rather than one, most definitely increases the odds of picking up coercive abortion.

“A three-day mandatory or protected period of time versus an optional period of time for a woman in a situation like that is completely different. Again, it behoves us to try to ensure that women who are vulnerable and women who are at risk of coercive abortions are protected.”

The Joint Committee on Health has not yet published a final report or made a formal concluding vote on the outcome of the Health (Abolition of the Three Day Wait Rule) (Amendment) Bill 2026.

The committee has been conducting the detailed pre-legislative and post-Second Stage scrutiny of the Private Members Bill (sponsored by Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane), which passed Second Stage in the Dáil in June 2026.