Twenty-six doctors from Co Wicklow sign up to Doctors for Yes campaign
Twenty-six doctors from Co Wicklow have joined a list of over 1,100 practicing Irish doctors signing up to Doctors for Yes, calling for a Yes vote this Friday, May 25.
The petition, launched recently at an event attended by Minister for Health Simon Harris, and hundreds of doctors from around the country, calls for a Yes vote so that medical professionals can provide safer, more compassionate healthcare to their patients.
Dr Nicola Cochrane, a GP in Greystones for 20 years, said: ‘As a practicing GP and from my work in Sexual Assault Unit Rotunda, I’ve witnessed first hand the terrible impact the Eighth Amendment has on Irish women at the most vulnerable time in their lives and I’m voting yes on May 25 to ensure safer, more compassionate healthcare in Ireland.’
It’s believed that over 3,200 wom- en travelled from Ireland in 2016 to access abortion care abroad and a further estimated 1,500 took abortion pills at home without medical supervision or support.
In Wicklow, 85 women travelled in 2016 and many more have done so since.
Dr Mark Murphy, who chaired the launch, said that the vote on Friday is not a vote on abortion but ‘a vote to decide if we are going to regulate it, make it safe and to care for the women who need it.’
Currently a doctor risks prosecution if they offer care to a woman diagnosed with a fatal foetal anomaly, a woman pregnant as a result of rape or a woman in a crisis pregnancy.
Obstetrician and gynaecologist Professor Louise Kenny, a specialist in the management of high-risk pregnancy, attended the launch and said that in her 25 years of practice she had witnessed at first hand the harms of the Eighth Amendment.
‘I have cared for women whose health has been irreparably harmed by the Eighth Amendment. I have cared for women who have died because of the Eighth Amendment. As an obstetrician, I never met a woman who wanted a termination, but I’ve met many women who desperately needed one,’ she said.