Students for Life Ireland, a pro-life student group, have revealed that medical students in Ireland are fearful for what careers might hold in light of the recently published paper relating to abortion in Ireland. Spokesperson for the group Clara Terren Hogan, a student of medicine in NUI Galway, said:
“As a medical student I am becoming increasingly concerned about what sort of horrors I will have to face when I qualify as a doctor. A recent paper published in the British Journal of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists focuses on the rollout of abortion in Ireland, specifically abortions occurring in Ireland under Section Eleven of the 2018 Act – where the unborn baby has a “condition which is likely to lead to death, before or within twenty eight days of birth”. Section Eleven of the Act permits abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy. This is something many student nurses, midwives and students of medicine are uneasy about”.
Ms Terren Hogan continued: “The research paper notes that sometimes abortions fail, and the baby survives. But as the law stands there is no legal obligation to provide medical assistance or to attempt to save the lives of babies who have survived a failed abortion. The referendum campaign here in 2018 was full of nice-sounding buzz words like ‘choice’ and ‘compassion’, but it is important that campaigners on all sides take time to read this research paper which, in many ways, presents the reality of these nice words – and gives voice to the doctors working on the cold face of ‘choice’.”
“The report speaks of how doctors and medics, having performed the abortion procedure, ran out into the corridors to vomit. It speaks of the ‘internal conflict’ some doctors experience, as they label the procedure as “brutal”, “awful” and “emotionally difficult”. The findings are graphic, with one quoted explaining the administration of feticide as “stabbing the baby in the heart”. It is important to note that to the best of our knowledge those who conducted the research and wrote the paper in UCC are themselves pro-choice, as I imagine are most of the medics who contributed. Students for Life Ireland are now calling for conscientious objection for medical students, this is not what we signed up for. The findings of the study show abortion for what it is – a barbaric inhumane procedure intended to end the lives of small, innocent, defenceless human beings”, concluded Ms Terren Hogan.
ENDS