The Irish Medical Council is proposing changes to its guidelines to allow for abortion. Among these changes is removing a doctor’s responsibility to help the sick and injured.
The role of medics in society has always been and will always be to tend to the sick and injured. If the Medical Council guidelines have to change to accommodate the enacted legislation of the State, then it is clear that the medical care sector is being used as a tool of the State, not as a service for the public good.
It is clear, therefore, that the recent Health Act lies in contradiction with the purpose of the medical system and the only option available is not to change the definition of medical care but for the government to amend the Act such that it is compatible with the existing guidelines and the universal definition of medical care. There is plenty of scope to do this under the 36th Amendment.