Service, not Servitude
A well-known British cosmetic surgeon says that transgender women (ie, natal males) should be entitled to womb transplants when the technique becomes safe and feasible. Children have already been born after womb transplants from live and deceased donors.
Dr. Christopher Inglefield, founder of the London Transgender Clinic and a specialist in “gender confirmation surgery”, told the Mirror (UK) that it would be possible to perform the procedure on a transgender woman. . . [Full text]
The Irish Times
State-owned hospitals should provide abortions in situations where neighbouring Catholic institutions are unwilling to do so, a new report suggests. . . the report says it is clear there will be situations where abortions have to be carried out in acute hospitals, rather than maternity units. There are seven Catholic voluntary hospitals in Dublin, Cork and Limerick . . . [Full text]
The Globe and Mail
Colombia decriminalized medically assisted death in 2015, the first country in Latin America to take the step, but it went much further last May with a regulation that made the procedure available to children.
It was a particularly striking decision in a socially conservative country where almost 80 per cent of people identify as religious Roman Catholics and where the population of evangelical Christians is growing rapidly; the churches, which vocally oppose euthanasia, are a powerful political force.
Providing assisted death to children is a controversial subject even in the field of palliative care. . . [Full text]
The Irish Times (Letter)
Reproduced with permission
Sir, –
Dr Mark Murphy states that doctors who are opposed to abortion are in no way affected by the new service and their conscientious right to objection is respected.
In fact, doctors who have a conscientious objection are legally compelled to make arrangements for the transfer of care of the pregnant woman concerned to someone who will terminate the pregnancy. For doctors who cherish human life from its origins, that is tantamount to making them accomplices in taking the life of a developing baby.
This is an abuse of conscience and contrary to the practice of medicine in the spirit of the Hippocratic oath which prohibits the direct intentional taking of human life.
Dr Murphy, who you omitted to mention is on the staff of the department of general practice at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, is one of a minority of GPs in Ireland who have signed up to provide abortion services; the vast majority of GPs have not done so – 274 was the figure recently reported by the HSE.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of a pro-life group; although as an ordinary citizen, I have consistently advocated for the life of the developing baby to be legally protected and have voted accordingly.
– Yours, etc, Dr Noreen O’Carroll, (Lecturer in Medical Ethics, RCSI), Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Indiana Senate Bill 201, proposed by Senator Liz Brown, has been amended in committee and is progressing through the Indiana General Assembly. Existing Indiana law protects freedom of conscience for physicians, nurses and institutional employees in relation to surgical abortion. Bill 201 amends the statute to include medical abortion and extends protection to physician assistants and pharmacists.