I support calls for a debate on Amnesty International's report on abortion. I am a religious person and passionately pro-life, but that label does not belong to any single section of the community. If Senator Paschal Mooney seeks to speak for the unborn, that is fair enough because they cannot select somebody to speak for them-----

That is very unfair; I never said that.

-----but I am very happy to speak on behalf of those who manage to be born and have real problems, including fatal foetal abnormalities. We are always told by spokespersons that we must be frightfully sensitive and that we cannot tell the truth. I believe in telling the truth. It is outrageous that somebody who is carrying a foetus that has no head, that is only a mass of tissue with no nervous system and no capacity for thought or feeling and no prospect of ever having it - it is a lump of flesh, nothing more - should be forced to carry it to term, or that a victim of rape such as a 13 year old girl raped by a neighbour should be forced by the religious pretensions of third parties to carry a foetus to term. It is incredible arrogance on the part of the people concerned, many of whom are elderly, celibate priests. It is absolute nonsense and it is time that we faced up to the issue. Victims of rape and incest and people carrying foetuses with fatal foetal abnormalities should certainly have their position clarified.

It is a human right for them to go on living a decent life and not to be terrified and put in misery by arrogant people for nine months.

If she agrees, I second Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell's amendment on post offices, as it is a subject about which I have spoken frequently.