Abortion was legalized two months ago in Northern Ireland, but some women are still facing roadblocks in order to access this medical procedure. Activists fought for years in order to legalize abortion in Northern Ireland. The procedure was finally made legal on March 31st, 2020. Now, women that seek to undergo a termination of pregnancy can do so up to 12 weeks on request. For women with mental or physical health issues that want an abortion, they can get one up until they are 24 weeks.
However, reproductive rights activist group and a doctor’s organization recently sounded the alarm that not all doctors are following the new law. Alliance For Choice and Doctor’s For Choice NI claim that some general practitioners refuse to give women seeking abortions a referral to the hospital. It’s not only the doctors refusing to do their job either—there have also been reports of nurses and midwives refusing to take care of women before and after they have had an abortion.
Naomi Connor, the co-convener for Alliance For Choice revealed that the doctors’ refusal to follow the laws has led to a serious regression in women’s reproductive health care. She also pointed out that denying a woman her legal right to an abortion isn’t going to stop the procedure being done. If anything, it will force women to go underground to get an abortion and that could be deadly.
“We had a lady who went to her GP to get an abortion,” Connor said to The Guardian “Her GP refused to help her; she asked to see someone else in the practice, and the GP said ‘no one else will help you unless you’re keeping your pregnancy, and if you are, we’ll provide you with folic acid and pregnancy support, but otherwise, we won’t help you’. We know that obstructing abortions doesn’t stop abortions, it just makes them unsafe.”
To add further fuel to the fire, a general practitioner named Dr. Andrew Cupples made a public blog post in November 2019 about his anti-abortion stance. Dr. Cupples has been very vocal about the fact that he refuses to refer a woman who wants an abortion to the correct hospital services—even if she wants the procedure done due to abnormalities in the fetus. Activists are also angry because he publicly stated that if one of his patients asked for an abortion, he’d push them to have a scan so they can “see” the fetus and then make an appointment for them to go to a pregnancy clinic. Many activists consider this to be incredibly manipulative and a way to force a woman to keep a pregnancy she doesn’t want.
Dr. Cupples hasn’t backed down though; he recently revealed in an interview with Observer this past weekend that he feels doctors can’t be forced to refer patients out for services they don’t agree with. In Northern Ireland, the law states that if a doctor has a legitimate contentious objection to the procedure then they have to let their patient know ASAP. They also have to tell their patient that it is their right to be able to see another doctor without the same objections and refer them ASAP so they can undergo the procedure.
Source: The Guardian