The Center for Reproductive Rights, an American activist organization based in New York, is assisting three women who are approaching the United Nations in an attempt to force Ireland to expand its newly-minted abortion law to include abortion for reasons of foetal abnormality likely to result in the death of the child soon after birth. They are also supported by an Irish “Doctors for Choice” group. [Irish Central] [The Guardian]
Category: Abortion
Abortion law changes eyed as Dr Mark Hobart probed
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Napthine government is not ruling out changes to Victoria’s abortion laws ahead of an investigation into a doctor who refused to give a couple an abortion referral because they wanted a boy.
The state government said it was interested in the outcome of the Medical Board of Victoria’s investigation into Mark Hobart, a pro-life doctor who has been accused of breaking the state’s abortion laws.
It comes as pro-life advocates run a concerted campaign to repeal a section of the Abortion Law Reform Act, which requires doctors who have a conscientious objection to abortion to refer a woman to someone with no such objection. [Full story]
European parliament narrowly rejects report attacking freedom of conscience
By a narrow margin (351/319) the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe rejected a Report on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights put forward by Edite Estrela of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality. The report complained of what it called “the abuse of conscientious objection” with respect to abortion in Ireland, Malta and Poland and other countries:
Conscientious objection’s practice has denied many women access to
reproductive health services, such as information about, access to, and purchase of contraception, prenatal testing, and lawful interruption of pregnancy. There are cases reported from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Ireland and Italy where nearly 70% of all gynaecologists and 40% of all anaesthesiologists conscientiously object to providing abortion services.
It described conscientious objection to abortion as “widespread” and demanded that states should regulate and monitor the exercise of freedom of conscience – at least freedom of conscience exercised by “reproductive health care providers.” The authors also assert institutions (such as hospitals) should not be allowed to operate according to conscientious or religious convictions. In its complaints about “the unregulated use of conscientious objection,” the report repeated the complaint of a 2010 report that was also rejected by the Assembly.
However, a minority opinion by author Anna Zaborska stated:
This non-binding resolution violates the EU Treaty and cannot be used to introduce right to abortion. . .No international legally binding treaty nor the ECHR nor customary international law can accurately be cited as establishing or recognizing such right. All EU institutions, bodies and agencies must remain neutral on the issue of abortion. . . . The human right of conscientious objection together with the responsibility of the state to ensure that patients are able to access medical care in particular in cases of emergency prenatal and maternal health care must be upheld. No person, hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to practices which could cause the death of a human embryo.
The report has been returned to the committee for review, but there is no doubt that a similar report will be returned for another vote some time in the future. [Christian Medical Comment; CNS News]
Doctor risks his career after refusing abortion referral
A DOCTOR risks being deregistered because he allegedly refused a referral for an Indian couple who wanted to abort a healthy unborn baby girl at 19 weeks, simply because they wanted a boy.
Dr Mark Hobart, 55, has been under investigation by the Medical Board of Victoria for five months, accused of having committed an offence under the state’s controversial Abortion Law Reform Act of 2008.
His patient and her husband requested a sex-selection abortion after an ultrasound determined their fetus was female.
They only wanted a boy, the husband told Dr Hobart, who, as a practising Catholic, had a conscientious objection to providing the abortion.
Under Victorian law, he was obliged to refer the patient to a doctor he knew would terminate the pregnancy.
But Dr Hobart doesn’t know any doctor who would agree to abort a healthy baby for sex selection reasons.
“The general response from my colleagues is disbelief and revulsion,” he said.
In any case, a referral is not necessary for an abortion. Hobart’s patient independently procured the abortion a few days later. Neither she nor her husband made any complaint.
But Dr Hobart now finds himself subject to a star chamber inquiry by the Medical Board of Victoria. [Full text]
Priest resigns after Mater Hospital agrees to comply with Irish abortion law
Father Kevin Doran of Dublin has resigned from the board of the Mater Hospital following its public statement that it would comply with the new Irish abortion law, which has not yet come into effect. Fr. Doran had previously said that it would be inconsistent with the Catholic ethos of the hospital to provide abortions. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin in making enquiries about the hospital’s position. [The Journal]
- Irish hospital agrees to comply with abortion law
- Mater Board priest says hospital can’t carry out abortions
- Irish government signals intention to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortion