Greg Daly
Medical professionals are concerned they may be compelled to perform or facilitate abortions despite believing them to be profoundly wrong, according to a speaker at a pro-life medical conference.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic at the ‘Medical Care and the Eighth Amendment’ conference in Dublin, Dr Andrew O’Regan said doctors and other medical professionals are worried they could become “complicit in an act we believe to believe to be harmful for women and intentionally destructive for babies”.
This issue transcends religion, the Killarney GP stressed: “You don’t need to have any religious belief to know that abortion is harmful, and doctors, nurses and midwives of all faiths and none recognise this and are alarmed at the way the Government are proposing a radical and extreme abortion bill.”
Maintaining that a truly compassionate approach to the issue would include the development of world-leading perinatal hospice care, a properly-funded free counselling service, and high level social supports, Dr O’Regan, a senior lecturer in general practice at the University of Limerick, warned against being influenced by emotive stories.
“The public are being force-fed a litany of falsehoods and exaggerations, instilling fear into the debate in order to push a radical proposal of unrestricted abortion for the first trimester of pregnancy,” he added.
Noting how such ‘hard cases’ can drive the debate, he said: “In Britain there are almost 200,000 abortions every year – this is a fact – though abortion was brought in there for the most rare and hard cases only”.