Minister Harris hits out at pro life doctors who refuse to facilitate abortion

My Name is Dr Hayes , I'm an obstetrician in st lukes hospital kilkenny , I love my job , I'm an advocate for the unborn , the purest of the pure , the most innocent .
 
last month we informed the GPs in the area and the HSE that we would not be performing abortions in st lukes hospital .
 
All four consultant obstetricians in the hospital decided unanimously that the hospital is not an appropriate location for medical or surgical terminations , a great many of my colleagues are unwilling to perform surgical abortions and they will not be forced to carry out this life ending procedure .
 
Would the politicians who most vehemently insist that we must perform abortions be willing to carry out one themselves . Would they evulse limb from limb and crush a baby's head and call it healthcare . Would they undertake the horrific task of ending the life of a living growing human being , I suspect not but they want us and they want to force Doctors like me to do so and thats not going to happen .
 
Would the GPs who are attacking pro life obstetricans on twitter perform a later-term surgical abortion again I suspect most of them would not , so why are they trying to force other people to be involved in something so repugnant to those of us who adhere to the first principle of medicine which is do no harm , shame on them for failing to respect conscientious rights of their colleagues in medicine but we wont be bullied by them either .
 
I got into medicine to help mothers and babies and to save lives . I will not be forced or bullied by politicians or by the media into performing or facilitating abortions .
 
Every other day I have the privilege to witness birth . I can see true love when a mother delivers her baby and her partner gazes on that child's eye . That is love and peace .
 
The truth is government is trying to trample the rights of medical professionals who conscientiously object to taking part in abortions , this a form of bullying that is absolutely unacceptable because a person's conscience is not subject to majority rule.
 
let me be clear , I will not take the curette to a helpless child in the womb and nobody can make me do so and there are hundreds if not thousands of doctors , nurses , midwives , pharmacists who feel the same , in fact 85% of GPs do not believe that abortion should be part of their general practice and 80% of GPs said they will not participate in providing abortion as part of general practice

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In some hospitals conscientious objection has actually become obstruction . there are some doctors in our hospitals who have gone beyond their own conscientious objection to actually trying to obstruct the establishment of the service and I'm not going to tolerate it , the HSE is not going to tolerate it and the government is not going to tolerate it either .
 
I do obviously have powers to direct the HSE to provide services as well .  If we cant have services provided by the natural way of asking people in certain parts of the country then we can actually put in a direct HSE staff resource into that part of the country .