No Sligo GPs registered to provide abortion services
COUNTY Sligo still has no community-level, GP-based abortion services for women in crisis situations, despite the huge ‘Yes’ vote in the county to repeal the constitutional ban on abortion two years ago.
SARRA (Sligo Action for Reproductive Rights Access) said yesterday (Monday), the second anniversary of the repeal referendum: “No Sligo GP has yet registered on the HSE www.MyOptions.ie website to provide abortion care to women in need. Some Sligo GPs may quietly offer services to their own patients but are in some cases too concerned about intimidation from anti choice groups and lack of training to put their name on the HSE register at this point.
“Due to the Covid-19 crisis the Government have temporarily put in place GP tele-medicine instead of surgery visits which allows women to have GP consultations to access abortion services by phone or video to access care.
“SARRA is deeply concerned that, because there is no local Sligo GP-based services for pregnancies under 12 weeks (and an arduous, complicated process in our hospitals to get care for pregnancies which involve a fatal foetal diagnosis), when the corona virus restrictions are lifted, the regulations will switch back and Sligo women will be forced once more to travel up to 100 kilometres outside the county for a GP consultation and to Galway for a FFA diagnosis,” Denise O ‘ Toole a spokesperson for SARRA said.
‘ These pre Covid regulations excluded many Sligo women because they have limited means, live in areas without public transport or in difficult domestic situations. In order to access services and fulfil requirements of legislation pre Covid for pregnancies under twelve weeks women simply just could not manage to make the 100km round journey to Donegal or Roscommon twice in three days. The legislation is completely unworkable in rural areas and this needs to be addressed.
“When the Corona virus restrictions ease, we cannot have women forced back into long journeys anywhere that many cannot manage or afford. The regulations permitting a phone or video GP consultation have proven to be successful and need to be retained.”