Irish PM: Catholic hospitals must offer abortions

Gay Irish Prime Minister: Catholic hospitals ‘will be required’ to abort babies

DUBLIN, June 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) - Ireland’s homosexual pro-abortion Prime Minister has announced that Catholic hospitals in the country will be obliged to perform abortions.

Leo Varadkar said that when the new laws liberalizing abortion come into effect, even Catholic institutions will have to offer the procedure.

Individual doctors, nurses or midwives will be allowed to refrain from committing abortions on conscience grounds, but whole institutions will not have this option.

According to the BBC, Varadkar’s government is currently writing a law that would allow abortion on demand up to 12 weeks on healthy babies and “in extreme cases” up to 24 weeks.

The Irish taoiseach (“chief”) said that the new law would follow the model of the “Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013” which provided for abortion in certain circumstances and allowed medical personnel to opt out.

“It will not, however, be possible for publicly-funded hospitals, no matter who their patron or owner is, to opt out of providing these necessary services which will be legal in this state once this legislation is passed by the Dáil (government) and Seanad (senate),” he warned.

Varadkar underscored that individuals would be allowed to “opt out based on their consciences or their religious convictions” but that institutions would not be allowed to do so.

"So, just as is the case now in the legislation for the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, hospitals like for example Holles Street, which is a Catholic voluntary ethos hospital, the Mater, St Vincent's and others will be required, and will be expected to, carry out any procedure that is legal in this state and that is the model we will follow."

This follows a post-referendum survey showing that a majority of family doctors in Ireland will conscientiously object to committing abortion and do not intend to provide the so-called service. Of 936 general practitioners (GPS), 68% would not “opt in” to become abortionists.

In response to the results of this survey, Dr. Ruth Cullen of the Pro Life Campaign suggested that the Health Minister’s assumption that Irish doctors will just go along with the governments pro-abortion agenda is divorced from reality.

“Listening to Minister Simon Harris you’d get the impression that GPs are fully on board with the Government’s abortion plans but nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.

“Forcing GPs to participate in abortions that have nothing to do with healthcare is an extreme and unjust attack on freedom of conscience and should be resisted at all costs,” she continued. “It is unconscionable for Minister Harris and the Government to compel doctors who don’t wish to dispense abortion pills to refer women to colleagues who will carry out the procedure.”

“We are witnessing something truly appalling at present – a government that seems prepared to trample on freedom of conscience in order to keep the pretence going that their abortion proposals are somehow medically indicated and based. It is very reassuring though to see the numbers of GPs who are voicing their opposition….”​