Health (Abolition of Three Day Wait Rule) (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-06-16 ============================================================ David Cullinane (SF), Waterford In 2018, the people voted in a historic referendum to appeal the eighth amendment and to remove legal barriers preventing women from exercising choice over their own pregnancies. This Bill is about respecting and trusting women in exercising that choice to access the care they need when they need it. It is about recognising that women do not take this decision lightly, that this is something they consider deeply and that they do not need the State or politicians to force them to wait for longer, as if they cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own pregnancies for themselves in their own time. This is a straightforward and targeted Bill. It does just one thing. It proposes to remove the mandatory three-day wait for access to an abortion during early pregnancy. It does this by deleting section 12(3) and by amending section 12(4) to remove the requirement for three days to have elapsed before a termination can be carried out. It does not require an abortion to happen on the day of a first consultation but when a woman is certain that this is what she wants, it allows her to make that decision for herself in her own time about her own pregnancy without a mandatory delay. I am open to working across the House on an amendment to clarify this further in the Bill, and I hope to do so. I understand there may be a number of technical amendments needed by Government if and when this Bill goes to Committee Stage. Under the current law, when a woman attends a doctor seeking a termination of pregnancy within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, the doctor must certify that it has been fewer than 12 weeks since the end of the pregnant woman's last period. A woman must then wait for at least three days before the doctor can carry out the procedure. The termination cannot happen at all if a woman subsequently times out of the 12-week period due to the mandatory delay. Instead, our Bill allows the termination to take place as soon as may be desired by the woman in her own time. This allows women who have made up their mind to access care when they seek it and still allows time for reflection for a woman who still needs time to think about this decision. This is important because the clear feedback from women is that they were bring pushed beyond the 12-week threshold by the three-day mandatory wait or were unable to secure a second appointment on time, which denied them their choice to end a pregnancy. Sinn Féin has always been clear and consistent that we did not approve of the mandatory waiting period; that it puts women in difficult positions; and that it is not compassionate to women who have suffered rape or sexual assault, to women who learn of their pregnancy late or to women who are subject to controlling or abusing partners and for whom that first appointment may be the only appointment they get. The three-day wait was examined as part of the review of the operation of the Act. Its removal is one of the clearest recommendations arising from that process. We recognise in law and in policy that women should have access to abortion services on the basis of their own choice. This was the compassionate position put before the people in 2018 and it is the basis on which services have been provided since. The question before us now is whether the State should continue to impose an arbitrary delay after a woman has already made her decision and presented to a doctor. I do not believe that it should. This waiting period does not provide care. It does not provide support. It does not make any service safer. It simply makes access harder, especially for those who can least afford delay. It can create real difficulty for women: for women who have travelled for long distances; for women arranging time off work or childcare; for women in crisis; and for women living with coercive, controlling partners, or domestic violence. For many women, having to return days later is not a small inconvenience but it can be a very serious barrier and has been identified as such. Removing the mandatory waiting period does not mean that the termination must take place on the first day. It does not remove a woman's ability to take more time if she wants to and in those circumstances she should and she must be supported. What this Bill does is remove the requirement that the State must force every woman to wait, regardless of her circumstances, her decision, her health or her needs. This Bill clearly sets out the Sinn Féin policy that was endorsed at our Ard-Fheis earlier this year. This Bill strikes the right balance. It is the right change to make. It is overdue. It respects women's decisions. It removes an unnecessary barrier to care. There are many other issues that these Houses should and must work through, arising from the review of the Act. I commend this Bill to the House. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-16