Irish doctors compare women to nazis, reject motion to allow suicidal women to have abortions.

Aoife O'Riordan, , , ,

This week at the Irish Medical Organisation’s annual conference, Doctors for Choice put forward motions calling for regulation for abortion in the most limited of cases: where there is a “real and substantial” risk to the life of the pregnant person.

This should not be controversial.

This is precisely what Irish people have voted for in multiple referenda. What the Supreme Court has ruled. What should have been the law of the land for the past two decades. We are not talking about the dreaded “abortion on demand”- or, as I like to call it, “medical care at the discretion of the person who needs it and their doctor”. Doctors for Choice were looking for nothing more than regulations guaranteeing that women who will not survive without abortions are not forced to either travel overseas or die.

Let’s see what they had to say. From the Irish Times:

Dublin GP Dr Cyril Daly said he was reminded of German doctors before the second world war who decided that young children with conditions such as blindness or deafness had lives that were not worth living and who were subsequently killed with cynanide.

Dr Eleanor Corcoran, a consultant psychiatrist, said if the motion was passed there would be abortion on demand in no time.

Dr Peter O’Sullivan, a GP from Dublin, said he could not remember a case where a patient wanted an abortion following a criminal act.

Dr John Keogh of Kildare said the motion brought the abortion debate to another level. “We are now talking about, despite the traumatic and dreadful situation regarding the conception, aborting normal healthy babies”. He said conception should not be a criteria for abortion.

The motions were all defeated.

Welcome to Ireland.

As you’re here

It’s time to plug the Abortion Support Network, who provide financial assistance, accommodation and shedloads of support to women who need to travel to the UK for abortions. Yes, I plug them every chance I get. Wouldn’t you?

Also a plug for the Abortion Rights Campaign. Because it’s time we put the ASN out of business, don’t you think?

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Irish doctors compare women to nazis, reject motion to allow suicidal women to have abortions.

About the author

Aoife is located in a small town in Ireland, and she won't let you forget it. She gets paid to teach, but will default to roller derby and social theory if given half a chance. She's quite likely (but not guaranteed) to be writing about: feminism, queerness, wheelyshoes, Ireland, what she cooked last week, or any combination of the above. She will tell you how to pronounce her name, but only if you ask very nicely.
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6 thoughts on “Irish doctors compare women to nazis, reject motion to allow suicidal women to have abortions.”

  1. Lili
    Reply
    1

    This is worrying on another level. If medically necessary abortions to save the life of the mother are legalised, a woman in the same situation as Savita may find herself in a hospital where the doctors refuse to do the procedure on the basis of conscience, whether it’s legal or not.

    Where I live, it would take a couple of hours to travel to the second – nearest hospital. If I were actively in labour with a fetus that would not survive, I wouldn’t be able to safely go to another hospital where the doctors may or may not be willing to do what needs to be done.

    It’s sickening to think that Irish doctors may be able to effectively overturn legislation simply by refusing to perform procedures that are legal.

    1. Ross
      Reply
      1.1

      Well it is not sickening you can’t force a doctor to do something he/she isn’t willing to do on the basis of legality if he/she finds it ethically wrong in the first place.

      2. Lili
        Reply
        …

        What Aoife said. I should think that allowing Savita to die as she did would be considered a violation of the Hippocratic Oath in most of the world. She died because the life of a non viable fetus was valued above her own life. So even if one were anti-choice, one would have to say that two patients died because of negligent inaction. How any doctor could condone this is beyond me.

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