Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
The Globe and Mail
Alberta’s medical regulator is calling on the college representing Canada’s family doctors to help it boost prescribing rates of the abortion pill, saying the current poor access in the province is putting patients at risk . . .
. . . A Globe and Mail investigation on Saturday revealed that the majority of abortion-pill prescriptions across Canada are being written at abortion clinics, which are primarily located in large urban centres. . .[Full text]
The Black Sea
Romanian medical student Bianca was in South Korea in March this year when she discovered she was pregnant.
At the time she was taking part in a short work placement in Daegu in the south-east of the country, and was soon to return to Germany to resume her Erasmus programme.
“The news freaked me out,” she told The Black Sea. “I knew a baby would complicate my career and I was not ready for it.”
The next few weeks and months were crucial. She’d not only her Erasmus responsibilities in Germany to consider, but Bianca was also due to sit a series of final-year medical exams at her university in Romania before beginning a hospital residency.
Bianca took the decision to end her pregnancy quickly, and from her temporary home in Daegu she considered the least complicated way to do this. . . [Full text]
The Irish Independent
Major gaps in hospital-based abortion services have been highlighted in several parts of the country, six months after the law on terminations was liberalised.
It means women are facing long journeys depending on where they live.
Doctors at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny wrote to GPs last week saying its four obstetricians “decided unanimously that the hospital is not an appropriate location for medical or surgical terminations”.
“We are having difficulties which centre around not only the issues of conscientious objection but also facilities,” said consultant obstetrician Professor Ray O’Sullivan. . . [Full Text]
The Irish Times
An additional obstetrician is to be appointed to St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny as part of the rollout of abortion services to its maternity unit.
The unit in Kilkenny is at the centre of controversy after the existing four obstetricians said it was not an “appropriate location” for the service introduced last January.
“In the event of professional and values training of staff willing to participate in such procedures, the hospital remains an unsuitable location for these services,” the consultants said in a letter to Ireland East Hospital Group chief executive Mary Day last week. . . . [Full text]
TheJournal.ie
MINISTER FOR HEALTH Simon Harris has said that it is the policy of the Department of Health that all 19 maternity hospitals in Ireland should be in a position to provide termination of pregnancy services, following a letter sent by four doctors at St Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny last week.
Harris said he had asked his officials to engage with the HSE over this letter, where the doctors said that abortions should not be offered at the hospital. . . .[Full text]