At least three hospitals in Ireland are not performing any abortions as doctors have conscientiously objected to be involved with the horrific procedure.
A number of doctors in the Republic of Ireland continue to recognise that in treating a pregnant woman they are in fact treating two patients – mother and baby – and refuse to be complicit in ending the lives of unborn children.
According to TheJournal.ie, a briefing document from May 2019 states that “conscientious objection is still a significant challenge in Letterkenny University Hospital”. Sligo University Hospital has also had a large number of doctors conscientiously objecting to perform abortions.
After a referendum in 2018, where Ireland voted to remove all legal protection for its own unborn citizens, doctors found themselves in a position of potentially being forced to perform abortions against their own conscience.
In relation to conscientious objections, the Department of Health said:
“It should be noted that the legislation provides that a medical practitioner, nurse or midwife shall not be obliged to carry out, or to participate in carrying out, a termination of pregnancy where he/she has a conscientious objection.”
However, robust conscientious objection protections are still not in place in Irish law.
The new abortion law requires the conscientious objector to “make such arrangements for the transfer of care of the pregnant woman”, meaning that they must send the woman to a doctor who will perform an abortion. In this way, the state forces doctors to participate in the processes of ending the life of one of their patients.
Ireland remains the only country in the world to have removed the human rights of an entire segment of its people by popular vote.
Clare McCarthy from Right To Life UK:
“It’s really encouraging that so many doctors in Ireland are refusing to perform abortions. They recognise that their professional duty towards the health of their patients extends to both mother and child.”
“Many doctors enter the profession to save lives, not to end them. In which case, it would be a very serious form of state oppression to fundamentally alter a profession in the manner that abortion does, and then punish doctors who refuse to be involved in it.”
“When the majority of doctors in Ireland began their career, there were strong protections in law for unborn children. It would be deeply unjust to force doctors to perform abortions now that those protections have been removed, because performing abortions was never part of their job description, is not healthcare and goes deeply against their conscience.”
