Dr. Mary Favier:

I will answer the first question on conscientious commitment. Senator Dolan started from the very important premise of trusting women. As general practitioners, patient-centred care and keeping women and anybody who can become pregnant at the heart of that care are about trusting the patient and, in this scenario, trusting women. Starting from a premise of patient-centred care, we are left with trying to support women who face crisis and unwanted pregnancies no matter what decision they may make.

From a conscientious commitment point of view, that language has come into the literature to recognise that there is a moral judgment involved in the imperative to provide care in these scenarios when women face these crises. A significant majority of Irish people voted to change the legislation in the referendum and general practitioners and doctors are no different from the general population. If anything, they have a more informed position because they see women in these unwanted pregnancies and the extraordinary lengths they have gone to in order to raise money and leave the country. It was because it was unsafe that the position was changed and the Irish people voted for that change.

There has been a serious chilling effect in medicine because we have not been able to talk about abortion and it has been actively discouraged and criminalised. For those reasons, we have found it difficult to have these conversations. They are only starting and all of us are on a journey in the sense of clarifying and setting our values. We have a deadline of 1 January but it will take some time in Irish society, particularly in the medical fraternity, to explore these issues further. Conscientious commitment and conscientious objection are part of this and they both need to be respected and valued.