GP says referendum campaign has led to ‘fundamental divisions’ within profession
The Irish Times
The State’s health system will be unable to cope with the demand for additional surgical procedures if access to abortion is legalised, a group of anti-abortion doctors, nurses and midwives has said.
The medics told an event hosted by the Save the 8th campaign on Monday that the Government had not carried out a full assessment of the cost and logistics of law changes arising from the potential repeal of the Eighth Amendment after the May 25th referendum.
Ann Flynn, assistant director of nursing at St Vincent’s hospital, Dublin, said Minister for Health Simon Harris was “asking us to introduce an abortion regime that cannot be introduced” into the health system he leads. . . [Full Text]
Canada was unprepared to deal with the actual demand for abortion following abortion law reform in 1969. As soon as the new abortion law went into effect, the number of legal abortions increased exponentially, from under 300 in eleven years to more than 11,000 in the first year. Promises of tolerance and respect for freedom of conscience, made to secure passage of the new abortion law, often proved worthless after the law had passed. Dramatic yearly increases in abortion rates continued for a decade. By 1977, forty per cent of objecting hospital employees had been compelled to participate in the procedure.
Should Ireland change its abortion law, it will be important to ensure that the health care system will be able to meet the demand without suppressing the exercise of freedom of conscience by those opposed to the procedure. What is done (or not done) in this regard will set a precedent for assisted suicide and euthanasia, should those procedures also be legalized. [ Therapeutic Homicide and Suicide in Canada: Collaboration, Conscription, Coercion and Conscience]