Abortion law review has pro-life medics in its sights

 

The official review of Ireland’s abortion law, published last week, was exactly as bad as pro-life campaigners feared it would be. Its only aim is to make it even easier to access abortion. It shows no visible concern for the unborn child and no visible wish that abortion should be rare, which is what the Government said it intended at the time of the abortion referendum.

The review recommends fully decriminalising abortion, targeting pro-life doctors and nurses, getting rid of the three-day waiting period, and allowing abortion in cases of a ‘fatal foetal abnormality’ even when the baby is likely to live more than 28 days beyond birth.

The review, commissioned by the Department of Health, also confirmed that some babies are born alive after an abortion and left to die.

Here are some the worst recommendations:

–          Decriminalisation of abortion.

Currently, abortions performed outside the limits of the law are considered a criminal offence. The review wants a full decriminalisation. Even Simon Harris, when he was the Minister for Health, thought that decriminalisation “would present a risk to the lives and health of women and that it would protect women who were forced into seeking an abortion, or where there was a dominant personality or sexual abuse.” The review disregards this thinking, even though it comes from a pro-choice perspective.

–          Cracking down on pro-life doctors and nurses.

The review says the health system should “positively discriminate in favour of persons willing to provide termination of pregnancy services” during the recruitment process of doctors. In other words, do not employ pro-life medics. Conscientious objectors are always presented in negative terms in the review.

In addition, it recommends so-called “values clarification” workshops in order to persuade pro-life doctors and nurses to become pro-choice.

It praises the HSE for already running these workshops which aim at “enabling participants to reflect on their values and thoughts about termination of pregnancy services by looking at their own beliefs and attitudes from the [point of view] of women seeking the service.”

Over time, the effect of these measures would be to sharply reduce, if not eliminate completely, the pro-life presence in Irish maternity wards.

–          Removal of the mandatory three-waiting period between the first visit to the doctor and an abortion

Waiting periods are a common feature in abortion legislation in other countries. In Italy, for instance, it is seven days; six days in Belgium. It allows women to reflect on their decision. According to HSE data, 17% of Irish women who made an initial appointment with a doctor with a view to ending their pregnancy did not return, indicating they went ahead with their pregnancies. The review ignored official data and used instead figures collected by a pro-choice group that underestimated the number of women who changed their mind.

–          Expansion of the current limits for abortion in cases of disabilities

Currently, an abortion can be requested at any moment of the pregnancy when the baby has a medical condition that might lead to its death within 28 days of birth. The review acknowledges that there is no universal list of such conditions and recommends a relaxation of the current restrictions. It also acknowledges that “fatal foetal anomaly” is not a medical term, something that the pro-life side continuously stressed during the referendum campaign.

–          Expanding the range of professionals who can provide abortions

Nurse or midwifes should be able to offer abortions, according to the review, in order to increase the number of providers and improve its geographical distribution. Currently, 11 of 19 maternity hospitals or units, and 422 GPs or clinics (around 10pc of the total) offer abortions.

–          Starve pro-life hospitals of funding 

The review recommends the diversion of funding from maternity hospitals not-providing abortions to ones that do so.

The review also recommends the development of specific guidelines to deal with babies who are born alive after an abortion. It says that “foeticide [killing the baby while still in the womb] will prevent parents and labour ward staff from facing the agony of neonatal distress and pain”. No concern is shown for the baby.

The review fails to address important issues such as the cases of misdiagnoses that have led to the aborting of healthy babies, the lack of abortion pill reversal treatment for women who have changed their minds after taking the first of the two abortion pills, the lack of mandatory counselling during the three-day waiting period.

This document says nothing about reducing the number of abortions, even though the Government promised abortion would be rare. The entire aim is to make it easier to access abortions which would only increase the rate. According to Health Minister, Stephen Donnelly, around 8,500 abortions took place last year.

A totalitarian twist as assisted suicide law targets Catholic hospitals

 

A new law in Queensland, Australia, will force hospitals and hospices to facilitate euthanasia even when it is contrary to their ethos. This is a very dramatic development and a clear example of how the ‘culture of death’, with the backing of the State, is eroding not only the right to life, but the ability of pro-life institutions and individuals to remain true to their ethos. The law is totalitarian in its basic impulse.

Incredibly, Catholic and other pro-life institutions will have to grant access to practitioners from outside and let them administer a lethal injection when the patients wants it, and cannot be moved to another facility. An external doctor or nurse will be permitted to overrule the treating doctors and kill the patient.

In reality, this means that in the state of Queensland there will be no health institution where euthanasia can’t, at least in theory, be performed. This is against internationally recognised medical ethics that acknowledges the right not only of individuals but also of institutions, to withdraw from what they think are unethical procedures.

The law also obliges all health care providers who do not want to practise euthanasia to inform patients about other doctors who might be able to help. They are also obliged to allow external personnel to offer information about “assisted dying” in their facilities. This represents a form of forced cooperation with evil that goes against the principle of conscientious objection in medical ethics.

Catholic Health Australia ran, without success, a concerted campaign to protect Catholic hospitals and nursing homes that provide about 20 per cent of hospital and aged care beds in Queensland.

Could something similar happen in Ireland if we permit assisted suicide, which is to be examined soon by an Oireachtas special committee, like the one which paved the way for abortion?

Already, pro-life doctors here must refer patients seeking abortions to pro-choice doctors, which is a form of forced cooperation.

Queensland is the fifth state in Australia passing a law enabling assisted suicide but the new Bill is even more radical than similar laws previously approved in other Australian states. For instance, according to the ‘Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill’, euthanasia or assisted suicide can be requested by someone with a condition “expected to cause death in 12 months”. In other Australian states such as time limit is shorter: 6 months.

Doctors have pointed out that predictions about death are often incorrect. “You can have the wrong diagnosis or you could have a very wrong assessment of life expectancy”, said Dr Stephen Parnis, Vice President of the Australian Medical Association.

In addition, in Queensland doctors will be permitted to raise the option of assisted suicide with patients, something other states do not allow. This is another terrible development.

“Australian parliaments have led the world down a new path for humankind, something unprecedented in all of human prehistory and history: that suicide is now a choice of the individual sanctioned by society”, commented indigenous leader Noel Pearson.

The promoters of the new law claim that there will be safeguards in place but the experience from other countries shows that those safeguards tend to be relaxed with time.

For instance, only last week California lawmakers made it easier to access assisted suicide. They reduced from 15 to 2 days the waiting period for verbally request it and they also eliminated the requirement for a written request in the presence of two witnesses. Oregon did something similar in 2019.

We know that once euthanasia and assisted suicide are introduced, the grounds always expand.

Two major setbacks for freedom of conscience and assembly

In the middle of the current crisis, it is easy to miss other stories. One is that we have had a bad few days for freedom of conscience, speech and association in various parts of Europe. For example, on March 12^th last week, both the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the European Court of Human Rights refused to hear cases that would protect the freedoms of those opposed to abortion.

The first refers to a Public Space Protection Order introduced in April 2018 by the London Borough of Ealing.  The order bans activities such as public prayer or offers of help to women considering abortion in the vicinity of abortion clinics in the Ealing area. The ban was challenged by Alina Dulgheriu, a young mother who changed her mind about having an abortion after speaking to pro-life activists near an abortion facility.

Ms Dulgheriu said the ban imposed by Ealing Borough violates fundamental rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. She challenged the Ealing Council’s order twice unsuccessfully until her case reached the Supreme Court, which has now rejected her appeal.

The second and even more serious case involving two midwifes working in Sweden who said they would not help to carry out abortions on the ground of conscientious objection. Sweden, which has the reputation of being tolerant and liberal, is one of the very few countries where conscientious objection to abortion is not recognised by law.

The midwives in question,  Ellinor Grimmark and Linda Steen said that they could not practice their profession if were obliged to help with abortions by their employers. They had lost several cases in Sweden and now the European Court of Human Rights has declared the two applications inadmissible, confirming that the position of the Swedish authorities.

The Court’s decision deprives those women of the right to conscientious objection and it is even more worrying as it could be extended to other medical professionals.

The European Centre for Law and Justice claimed the decision represents a “moral regression” and a complete departure from previous judgements of the Court. It has also expressed doubts about the impartiality of the three judges involved in this case, as one of them is a past member of the Swedish Gender Equality Agency while another has been involved in feminist activities since the 1980s.

The aforementioned Ms. Dulgheriu is now considering bringing her case to European Court of Human Rights, but the decision concerning the midwives is not encouraging.

In both the British and the Swedish cases we see that the right to have an abortion is now considered so fundamental that it prevails when there is a conflict with other important rights such as freedom of conscience, or speech, or of assembly. Abortion is now so established in our culture that everything else is deemed secondary and has to be sacrificed.  The recent court decisions confirm that the slippery slope is real, once the right to life is infringed all other fundamental rights will inevitably suffer.

Time for Irish pharmacists to be given proper conscience rights

A landmark rule has recognised the right for German pharmacists to refuse to sell the so-called morning after pill (MAP) on grounds of conscience. No such right has ever been recognised in Ireland. The drug is used as a post-coital contraceptive but, when conception occurs, it also prevents implantation in the uterine wall, causing the death of the embryo.

The German case occurred when a pharmacist who based in Berlin refused to stock or sell the drug was and reported to the Pharmacists’ Chamber. He then took the matter to the Professional Court of the Administrative Court of Berlin, which ruled in his favour, but the case could continue if the Chamber appeals.

It was the first time that a court addressed the matter in Germany. Other European countries, Italy or Spain for instance, have recognised such a right through court ruling or legislation.

“Personal beliefs and conscience influence all areas of a person’s life and are not simply laid down in a professional setting. This pharmacist in Berlin faced legal proceedings for choosing to act in line with his conscience. The court recognized that he did not violate the law and should not be forced to act against his personal convictions,” said Felix Böllmann, Legal Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom International, which is the advocacy organization that has supported the pharmacist in this case.

Provision for conscientious clauses are more common for other health professionals but pharmacists often find their rights not protected.

This is the case in Ireland where no law or code explicitly recognises conscientious objection rights for pharmacists.

The morning after pill is not classified as an abortifacient under Irish law, even if it has the possible effect of killing a newly formed human being.

When in 2011 the Irish Medicines Board approved the sale of a new MAP over the counter without the need for a prescription, the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI) confirmed that pharmacists must stock the drug or “take reasonable action to ensure that these medicines or services are provided”.

In the recently updated Code of Conduct of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI) there is no reference to freedom of conscience, religion or belief.

Conscientious objection is not provided explicitly, and it is mentioned only once, simply in order to emphasis the limits of its scope. Addressing the pharmacist, the Code says: “[You] must refer patients to an alternative provider if you cannot provide a professional service or medicinal product, including in the case of conscientious objection, ensuring that patient care is not jeopardised or compromised” (p. 9)

In theory, one way for a pharmacist to avoid the direct selling of the drug is through an expedient. They could simply not stock the drug in their premises and therefore circumvent the obligation to sell. But as the Code still oblige them to refer patients to an alternative provider, they are practically forced to act against their conscience anyway and to participate to a course of action that potentially kills a human being. Moreover, this limited expedient is not available to those who work in a pharmacy where they have no control on what is sold.

A pharmacist could also take a constitutional case and see if the Irish courts would recognise their rights that way but as of now, pharmacists have no explicitly recognised right to refuse to sell drugs like the morning after pill.

This is astonishing and it was noted in a report produced by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe. “The Irish constitution has strong religious freedom protections, but if a pharmacist is unwilling to sell the morning after pill he would have to take his employer to court and plead for his constitutional rights. This could be very expensive and therefore most pharmacists with an objection to abortifacients in practice either sell them or quit their job.”

There is no explicit protection for pharmacists in the 2019 abortion legislation and, similarly, it is possible that if euthanasia and assisted suicide are introduced in Ireland, pharmacists will be coerced to provide lethal drugs.

The new Code of Conduct of the PSI never mentions conscience, as if it has no part in the profession. On the contrary, the aspiration to prevent diseases, to heal, and to take care is a deeply ethical element in the job of pharmacists. Denying conscience and its rights represents a fundamental disavowal of the moral dimension that leads their work.

Medical Council’s Ethics Guide now less ethical

The Irish Medical Council has produced an updated version of the Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Medical Practitioners.

 The most relevant changes follow the Ireland’s new abortion law.

Let’s consider them in detail.

Section 48 of the Guide was titled “Abortion” in the previous editions while now the euphemism “termination of pregnancy” is used. This expression is not accurate. For instance, in so called ‘reductive’ abortions, which is when only one of two or more fetuses is killed, abortion takes place, but the pregnancy continues, it is not terminated.

The expression “termination of pregnancy” is ideological more than factual. It tries to say that what is ended is not a human being but simply a pregnancy. It denies the humanity of the child involved. In changing the language of their guide, the Medical Council shows also a changed attitude towards those directly involved in every pregnancy, i.e. the mother and her child.

This is confirmed by the fact that paragraph 48.1 of the previous edition of the Guide, which said: “You have an ethical duty to make every reasonable effort to protect the life and health of pregnant women and their unborn babies”, has been now completely deleted.

One could easily argue that even where abortion is legal, doctors should still seek to protect the life and health of pregnant women and their unborn babies, as far as it is possible, while also respecting the choice of the mother. But the Medical Council withdrew any reference to the child in their updated ethical guidelines. The new version of paragraph 48.1 simply refers to the 2018 abortion Act.

Paragraph 49 is about conscientious objection. It contains no new formulation, apart from references to the 2018 abortion legislation and the introduction of the prohibition against providing false or misleading information.

But the context for it is very different. Before, abortion was not legally available in Ireland and so a pro-life doctor did not have to refer a pregnant woman seeking an abortion to a pro-choice doctor. Now they must do that.

It was after the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act 2013, and even more now with the new liberalised abortion regime, that whole paragraph 49 acquired a new distorted meaning.

Paragraph 49 also refers to ‘medical treatments’, but of course, abortion is not a treatment, least of all for the baby.

Not even the new abortion law defines abortion as a ‘treatment’ or a form or care, but rather as “a medical procedure which is intended to end the life of a foetus”.

Those who conscientiously object to abortion base their position precisely on the fact that it is not a treatment or a form of care, and so they do not have a professional or moral duty to take part in it.

The new ethical Guide of the Medical Council should have recognised their position but it doesn’t.

Overall, the new Guide simply follows the changes in law and assumes that there is no difference between law and ethics. What happens if, one day, we decide to legalise assisted suicide and euthanasia? Presumably the Medical Council will sheepishly follow suit.

The Abortion Bill and Conscientious Objection

The abortion Bill presented by Minister Simon Harris is now before the Oireachtas where numerous amendments have been tabled. Some deal specifically with the issue of conscientious objection and want to offer it better protection.

The Bill envisages that doctors won’t have to perform abortions, but they must refer patients on to those who will. Pro-life medics believe they cannot do this as it means their second patient – the unborn baby – will be deliberately killed.

Opponents of conscientious objection complain that the ‘personal preferences’ of doctors and nurses (and the pharmacists who have to hand out the abortion pill or the lethal component to be injected in the baby’s heart) should not prevail over their ‘duty of care.’ Conscientious objection, they claim, is an unacceptable exception to professional duties taken in the name of religious, and therefore irrational, beliefs. Morality is personal and should not interfere with someone else’s medical needs.

These arguments are based on a misunderstanding of the relationship between conscience and professional duty. They reduce the doctor to a mere ‘service-provider’ rather than a morally responsible decision-maker in their own right.

Medicine is a value-laden endeavor by its nature. It is intrinsically ethical because it is based on the moral judgement that health is a good and has to be preserved, while illness and suffering are bad and have to be avoided. Medicine combines scientific knowledge with ethical purposes. Scientific knowledge provides the means of preserving the good of health, or at least of reducing pain. Ethics means health-care must be provided in a way that does no deliberate harm to a patient.

Without ethics, a health professional is reduced to a mere technician. They perform certain medical activities well, but are allowed no real opinion as to whether their action is moral or immoral. The State, or their patient, simply tells them what to do.

But true healthcare is relational. The carer and the cared-for enter into a dialogue that enable them to take together the best decision, and each one contributes according to their expertise, experience and moral values. Professional conscience plays a fundamental role here, as it evaluates what is best.

The peculiarity of care in pregnancy is that there is a third component, i.e. the voiceless child. Doctors have duties of care towards the second patient as well, and this is the simple reason why elective abortion is not acceptable from a medical point of view, because it denies and annihilates the second patient.

We hear that endorsing conscientious objection means endorsing the principle that individual beliefs trump the health and lives of people who need a medical service. It is an excuse for doctors to exert personal power over the patient by imposing their own views.

These arguments are based on the fallacious assumption that conscientious objection is a category of religious freedom. It is sometimes the case that objectors are motivated by their religious faith, but this is not necessary to justify objection, as professional conscience is always present in identifying what course of action is appropriate in a specific case.

"Refusal of care" is a new term used to negatively refer to conscientious objection. This derogative expression is a miserable attempt to portray abortion as a form of care, and to stigmatise those who do not want to be involved in its provision. But medical professionals refuse abortion precisely because it doesn’t take care of the second patient, i.e. the unborn child. According to the Bill recently proposed by Minister Harris, abortion is “a medical procedure which is intended to end the life of a foetus.” How is this care?

Conscience is an ordinary element of medical decision making. It is inseparable from the routine, day-to-day practice of medicine. Those who present objection to abortion as a refusal to treat forget that there are two, and sometimes more patients in a pregnancy, and the doctors and other professionals have a duty to care for all of them, particularly the most vulnerable.

Conscientious objection to a medical intervention can be justified if it conflicts with the doctor’s oath to do no harm and to respect life. The same considerations apply in the debate about assisted suicide. When an action is not aimed at preventing or curing a disease, it can be hardly considered as medical.

In forcing doctors to be involved in abortion, directly or indirectly (by referral), the State treats them as mere instruments without a conscience. Their scientific knowledge is not at the service of the good, i.e. health, but of an ideology of absolute autonomy of the patient.

This betrayal of medicine is grounded on the disregard for the role of professional conscience in all medical decision-making, and not only when ethical dilemmas arise. If conscience is a fundamental component of medical decision-making, then there is no medicine without conscience.

Christian bakery wins vital freedom of conscience battle

After a long and costly battle, Ashers Bakery from Belfast, which is owned and operated by a Christian couple, has been vindicated. Ashers had refused to bake a cake that was to be iced with the words “Support Gay Marriage.” The ruling is a very important one for freedom of conscience.

The case refers to Mr Gareth Lee, an activist from a group called Queerspace, who in 2014 placed an order for a cake to be iced with a cartoon design and above wording. The McArthurs, the Christian family that runs Ashers, decided that they could not in conscience produce a cake with that slogan and so should not fulfil the order. The fact that Mr Lee was gay was not known to the McArthurs, who served him in the past. They objected to this request, but they had no problem with offering him other services.

Mr Lee complained to the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI) about the cancellation of his order and the ECNI supported him in bringing this claim for direct and indirect discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation, religious belief or political opinion.

In 2015, the Presiding District Judge held that refusing to complete the order was direct discrimination on all three grounds and awarded Mr Lee damages. The Court of Appeal confirmed this rule, and so the Ashers appealed to the Supreme Court in a bid to overturn the judgement.

The Supreme Court had to decide whether it is discrimination for a bakery to refuse to supply a cake with the message “Support Gay Marriage”, because of their belief that gay “marriage” is inconsistent with their faith.

The Court ruled that the Ashers objected to the message, not the messenger. Mr Lee was treated less favourably than other would-be customers not because of his sexual orientation, as he claimed, but because of the message he wanted to be iced on the cake. In fact, a person with a similar request and a different orientation would have been treated in the same way and this is not discrimination, according to the Supreme judges.

“There was no less favourable treatment on this ground because anyone else would have been treated in the same way. The objection was not to Mr Lee because he, or anyone with whom he associated, held a political opinion supporting gay marriage. The objection was to being required to promote the message on the cake. The less favourable treatment was afforded to the message not to the man. …  The evidence was that they were quite prepared to serve him in other ways. The situation is not comparable to people being refused jobs, accommodation or business simply because of their religious faith. It is more akin to a Christian printing business being required to print leaflets promoting an atheist message. “, Lady Hale, president of the Supreme Court, wrote.

It is significant that the other four judges agreed with Lady Hale. It was a unanimous verdict that vindicated the long battle of the baking company and the family behind it.

“The judges have given a clear signal today. In fact, it couldn’t be any clearer. Family businesses like ours are free to focus on giving all their customers the best service they can – without being forced to promote other people’s campaigns”, Daniel McArthur, Asher’s General Manager, said. “I know a lot of people will be glad to hear this ruling today, because this ruling protects freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for everyone.”

Oppressive liberalism does not tolerate dissenting opinions. In many countries, activists have targeted florists, photographers, restaurants or bakeries that do not provide services for same-sex marriages, with the purpose of ruining their business. Here in Ireland we see that pro-life doctors will be required by law to refer women seeking abortions to pro-choice doctors.

As Lady Hale indicated, the bakery could as easily have been asked to bake a cake with a slogan denying the existence of God and would have been just as entitled to refuse to do that.

The Supreme Court has now said that declining to do something that promotes a viewpoint you do not support, is not a form of discrimination. This is a victory not only for free speech but also for freedom of conscience. People in business cannot be obliged to support with their work political views they don’t agree with.

This case also raises questions about state bodies, such as the Northern Ireland Equality Commission, that, rather than promoting freedom in all its forms, including religious freedom, often work more like ideological advocacy groups. This was an expensive and divisive case that could have been solved with common sense. The Ashers decided to fight for their own rights but this case will have wider implications and, hopefully, will inspire others not to submit to the pressure of society but to live according to conscience.

(The Christian Institute has played a significant role in this case.  You can find more details about it on their website: http://www.christian.org.uk/wp-content/downloads/ashers-factsheet-oct2018.pdf )

Conscientious objection is again under attack

Minister Simon Harris has presented his abortion Bill in the Dáil and has confirmed that it will allow only a limited form of conscientious objection.

In the Bill, which is now being discussed in the Oireachtas, there is no provision for institutional conscientious objection, which means that hospitals with a religious ethos will be forced to offer abortions. Also, there is no provision for pharmacists working in hospitals.

A growing number of doctors, including some who supported the repeal of the 8^th amendment, are asking the government to amend the Bill so that medical doctors should not be obliged to refer their patients for an abortion, which is a form of participation. However, Minister Harris doesn’t seem ready to concede any change on this matter.

Of all the deputies who have commented on the Bill, only Mattie McGrath has defended the conscience rights of physicians, nurses and midwife. He also made reference to a letter signed by 203 Irish medical doctors, expressing their “profound concern that the Irish College of General Practitioners has not made the issue of freedom of conscience a central part of its consultation with GPs regarding the Government’s proposed new legislation on abortion”.

Louise O’Reilly, speaking for Sinn Féin, said that they “do not agree that medical professionals who invoke the conscience clause should be exempt from referring a patient for the necessary medical treatment they seek.”

Labour Party spokesman for health, Alan Kelly, explicitly requested that institutions should not be granted conscientious objection, and so did Deputy Catherine Murphy. Speaking for the Social Democrats, she said: “While the Minister has assured me that there can be no conscientious objection on the part of institutions, it would be remiss of us to ignore the fact that certain boards of management potentially could instruct staff to adhere to internal regulations. We must ensure the legislation covers such eventualities.”

Deputy Ruth Coppinger (Solidarity – People Before Profit) claimed that “conscientious objection is used as a mechanism in other countries to act as a barrier to abortion. In parts of Italy pregnant women cannot access abortion because doctors refuse it”.  A similar statement about Italy was made also by Joan Collins. Italy has a high number of conscientious objectors and for this reason it is a common target of pro-choice campaigners, but they never say that even if the percentage of objectors among doctors has increased with time, this does not affect the general provision of abortion as the requests have diminished significantly. (Read more about Italy here: https://ionainstitute.ie/abortion-rights-activist-target-conscientious-objection-with-false-information/)

Deputy Bríd Smith (Solidarity – People Before Profit) was the most extreme opponent of freedom of conscience: “we need a much stronger impetus whereby objecting doctors must refer on. That referral must be immediate and must never be denied. There has to be a criminal sanction for refusing to do so. If we are going to sanction practitioners criminally for helping women to make the choice, we must criminally sanction those who refuse to help them make that choice. I would like to see a body that polices that operation”.

Pressure to limit conscientious objection is coming from bodies that depend heavily on Government funding, such as the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, and the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI). In their response to the Bill, the NWCI wrote: “Protection for women in the case of conscience-based refusal of care (so-called ‘conscientious objection’) requires a clear, legal and policy framework, governing the practice of conscientious objection by healthcare providers, coupled with an effective oversight and complaint mechanism for women”.

It has to be noted the use of the derogative expression “refusal of care”, employed also by Dr Peter Boylan at the Oireachtas Health Committee hearings last week, and by the Abortion Rights Campaign and other pro-abortion organizations in their comments to the Bill. This is a miserable attempt to portray abortion as a form of care, and to stigmatize those who do not want to be involved in its provision. But medical professionals refuse abortion precisely because it doesn’t take care of the second patient, i.e. the unborn child.

According to the Bill, abortion is “a medical procedure which is intended to end the life of a foetus”. How is this care?

“Refusal of care” is an offensive distortion of language. It ignores that conscientious objection is a right internationally recognized—see for instance article 10 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights—it is a common feature of abortion legislation across the globe, and no national or international treaty or charter ever refers to objectors in such demeaning terms.

Minister Harris, if we voted for your abortion law, why did you change it?

During the referendum campaign we were told, correctly, that the vote was not on the proposed legislation but only on the removal of the pro-life amendment.  Among those telling us this was no less a person that the head of the Referendum Commission, Justice Isobel Kennedy.

So, in theory, the abortion legislation proposed by Minister Simon Harris before the referendum can be changed because we did not vote for that.  But what we are seeing in practice is that any attempt to discuss the details of the future law is immediately shot down on the grounds that we had, in practice, voted for the proposed Bill.

On the other hand, the Government itself, having said we voted for the Bill on May 25^th and that not a line of it can be changed, has, in fact, changed a number of key aspects of it.

For example, the second version of the General Scheme, presented by Minister Harris after the referendum, has a new definition of viability, which extends the time limit of abortion, a new definition of fatal abnormality, which extends the expected fatality of the condition from birth to a month after birth, and also a new definition of conscientious objection, which limits its scope rather than expanding it. Furthermore, Simon Harris wants to introduce new features such as the ban of vigils or protests outside abortion venues.

(Find a more detailed account here: https://ionainstitute.ie/latest-version-of-planned-abortion-law-even-worse-than-the-first-version/)

It is also significant that those who are now requesting an even more liberal law are contradicting what they themselves said during the referendum campaign.

For example, speaking at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health last week, Dr Peter Boylan maintained, “it is unnecessary and demeaning to women to suggest that they have to wait three days to make their minds up.”

But during the referendum campaign Dr Boylan spoke about the 72 hour period in positive terms.

In this video, for instance, he explains that there is pause period in other countries in Europe and “that allows a woman to fully understand the implications of what she is doing”. He claimed that when Irish women go to the UK, they are already committed but the 72 hour pause period will allow the woman to meet her doctor and discuss the full implications of what she has decided to do, and then “to go and think about it”.

On another occasion he said that the reflection period had to be welcomed. (See here)

Why does he now think this is “demeaning”?

Even the Together for Yes website had no objection to this proposal at the time. “There will be 72-hour mandatory waiting period, to give the woman time to consider her options and ensure this is the right decision.”

Pro-choice campaigners and politicians can’t have it both ways, saying that with their vote the people approved the proposed law in detail and, at the same time, trying to change it in a more liberal direction, often contradicting their own words.