Abortion split leads to mass GP walkout
Nearly 50 doctors quit EGM over service information
A BITTER split over the provision of referrals on abortion services led almost 50 GPs to walk out of a meeting of the doctors’ group, the Irish College of General Practitioners, yesterday.
The object of the meeting – attended by over 300 GPs – was to discuss the implementation of abortion services which come into effect next month.
Composed largely of pro-life doctors who said they would refuse to refer abortions to other medics, the group left the extraordinary general meeting after 30 minutes of argument at Malahide’s Grand Hotel.
The group has claimed that it has the support of several hundred doctors throughout the country. Several doctors shouted support for them in the hallway as their leaders spoke to the media after walking out.
Also among the protesters were those angered that they had not been consulted about the introduction of abortion as a GP-led scheme and said they did not have scanning equipment and other resources.
The group had called for a vote on a number of motions on abortion at yesterday’s meeting but their request was denied.
Speaking after the walkout, group spokesman Dr Andrew O’Regan said that he was ‘disappointed’ by the ICGP’s attitude, adding ‘democracy has not happened here today’.
‘We feel now that we have no other option than to physically go and collect signatures so that we can have another EGM,’ he said.
‘Today was a talking shop. Today did nothing and was not designed to heal the division that was emerging in our own college and it’s a division that was not of our making.
‘There are a whole spectrum of opinions within our grouping that have left this meeting – people that have felt differently about the abortion referendum. But people... are united in that we have not been listened to and we have not been genuinely engaged with in a respectful and democratic way.’
Dr Niall Maguire said that proposed abortion legislation demands that a doctor with a conscientious objection to a topic must refer their patient on to another doctor or face sanctions. ‘That might have been
‘We have not been listened to’
fair enough in relation to other issues around maybe genetic testing or around the issues of the morning-after pill, but in relation to the killing of an unborn human, we need much stronger protection that that’, he said. ‘No doctor should be coerced to go against their conscience’, he said. ‘If we insist on doctors going against our conscience, if we allow doctors to become the agents of the State, it’s a very sad day for medicine and it’s got much wider implications than merely to do with termination.’
In response, the ICGP said that they were ‘disappointed’ that members had left, but added that the debate within the meeting had been ‘meaningful’.
Medical director of the group, Dr Tony Cox, said that authorities were ‘sorry that those who walked out didn’t stay to listen’.
‘I understand that they have claimed that they weren’t being listened to... and yet we were here to listen and we have tried to listen at every juncture,’ he said.
While he said he had not been informed of a call for signatures for another EGM, he said that in order for such a meeting to take place, objectors would need to gather signatures from 10% of members, which is around 350 GPs from the membership of 3,500.
However, he added that it was ‘heartening’ to see that despite leaving, a number of the objectors had returned to hear discussion on other subjects. Minister for Health Simon Harris said: ‘Doctors have a right to conscientious objection, but women also have a right to healthcare. The law on abortion is changing; the law on conscientious objection is not changing,’ he said.
‘If you are saying to me that a woman who goes to her GP in crisis, looking for help and looking for a service that is legally available in our country and that that woman should be shown the door or given the cold shoulder, that is not conscientious objection.’