Abortion meeting moved in protest fear

A GROUP representing pro-choice doctors and obstetricians moved a scheduled meeting from Limerick’s maternity hospital to a ‘secret’ location, following concerns that it would attract protests by pro-life campaigners.

START (Southern Taskgroup on Abortion and Reproductive Topics) said its meeting would take place in Classroom 2, University Maternity Hospital Limerick, from 7-9pm on Tuesday. However, the meeting was moved to two hours before it was set to start.

Medical sources confirmed management received ‘emails and phone calls’ in which they were accused of being ‘abortionists’ and ‘murders’, adding: ‘There has been a very orchestrated campaign organised through social media. The hospital has received letters, phone calls and emails. The hospital was providing a room for the meeting, but they were not involved in organising the meeting.’

Dr Brian Kennedy, a speaker at the meeting, told the Limerick’s Live 95FM: ‘There was actually a lot of quite frightening intimidation going on, so in the end we had to have a secret location and organise it with WhatsApp groups... We had to see sense and change the location.’

He said the meeting was about educating GPs about new abortion legislation coming into force in the New Year.

Dr Kennedy said he didn’t think protesters could be stopped because of the ‘emotive’ and ‘upsetting’ nature of the topic for ‘a lot of people’, but said we must think of the pregnant ‘woman in crisis’ first.