Dr. Catherine Conlon:

The most tragic or difficult case we came across was that of a young woman who had been the subject of a sexual assault. She attended her GP with symptoms and discovered in that consultation that she was pregnant. The GP, who was her family GP, advised her to engage with the pregnancy counselling service. She came back to that GP and they had a further conversation. She said she was clear at that point that she wanted to proceed with a termination. The GP did not say he was not a provider of termination care but asked her to return to have another session with a pregnancy counselling service because he felt she was not clear in her decision. She returned a third time to that GP believing she would be cared for. Obviously, her time was moving towards 12 weeks. The GP told her on the third visit that his practice did not provide the care nor did they agree with abortion care being provided and they would not give her any information as to where she could access care. Thankfully, she found her way to a women's health clinic in Dublin within the 12 weeks. They referred her to hospital for care and also to the sexual assault treatment unit. The GP practice had not provided her with care for the sexual assault either. Their sole focus seemed to have been to obstruct her in accessing abortion care. To me, that is the most tragic way that this aspect of our health service and the abortion care service can unfold. There were other people. One woman who lived in the west of Ireland had gone to seven GPs. She was a non-national woman who was trying to navigate the Irish health service for the first time to access abortion care and she made seven contacts with GPs - with receptionists or GPs themselves - before she was connected to the My Options service. The stock answer she got was "we do not provide that kind of thing here" and one receptionist asked her why she would not continue her pregnancy.