Dr. Caitriona Henchion:

It is very difficult to say. First, it depends on the environment in which one is working. The IFPA has a number of doctors and nurses, we have our specialist counselling team and we are providing this care, so we have a network of supportive people set up. We have colleagues to whom we can turn to discuss cases, we have colleagues with whom we can discuss anything that is difficult and we have our counselling team for women who are in a lot of distress or have additional needs. That could be women suffering in domestic violence situations, women with disabilities or women with difficulties with travel. For all those things we have a support network in place.

As I said earlier, it is almost unconscious that it is sitting there all the time and it is putting a great deal of pressure, particularly in cases where one feels that ticking clock. There will be women who will say they cannot go into hospital, but one knows they will be past the time when we should see them by the time the three days go by, whereas if one could have seen them straight away that would not have been the issue. It is there all the time. In the community we are dealing with the 12-week situation. That is very black and white. We are not afraid so much of our judgment being questioned in the longer term because we have to operate within that 12 weeks. It is much more something one needs to think about in terms of whether that is the reason there are only one in ten GPs opting in. Is that why so many people do not want to provide services? Why get oneself involved with something where one has to know the ins and outs of a very complex Act when one can just opt out?

Then one must look at the enabling environment that will allow GPs to do that, which is the proper geographical spread. If one knows that the local hospital is not providing services, then every time one sees somebody who is over nine and a half weeks one will have to refer her to a distant location and one will have to go through that complex pathway with that person. That is a deterrent to a GP. The GP also knows that if the patient has a complication, she will be going into a hospital where this is not a provided service for her after-care if she has bleeding. One does not know what type of treatment she is going to get, what type of bias she will come up against and what the level of knowledge to look after her is. It is much more than just asking, "Am I afraid of being prosecuted?". I am not, particularly. It is the entire deterrent and the way it forces one to deal with people, for example, the amount of additional blood testing we will do for women who might be coming to 12 weeks after a possible failed termination.