Professor Veronica O'Keane:

The Deputy's second question was about what counselling services were available. Irish women, when they go for abortions, are given what is called counselling beforehand, and really, that is a process of informed consent that is common to all medical procedures that are undertaken. If I start people on medication I would obviously tell them what it is, how it works, what the side-effects would be and what the consequences would be if, for example, they were to get pregnant. An abortion is like any other medical procedure. We have to talk about the consequences of having it and the possible risks involved. Counselling at a more in-depth emotional level is not always, in practice, something that is done. It will be done, obviously, if there is a need for it. Irish women who go across to the UK leave within 24 hours of having had the procedure, and they are usually quite unwell, or at least in a very delicate position and situation, and they are in pain. I guess they do not get counselling before they leave the UK and they do not go back there for counselling.

On the GP care that is provided here, GPs provide counselling care but, unfortunately, there is no proper training for abortion care in Ireland. There is training for the procedures that are used because essentially some forms of surgical abortion are the same as procedures that would be done, for example, for difficult menstruation problems or for retained products of conception, so while there is procedural training, there is not necessarily explicit training in relation to having had an abortion, which is a different emotional issue, obviously, to having the contents of a uterus evacuated. If we are looking to have abortion services in Ireland, and the Deputy made reference to this, counselling would have to be a part of it, but I do not think it is always necessary. I do not think women always need counselling. Some women are quite clear about what they want to do, and it is not necessarily a very complex or a very heartrending difficult problem for them. Obviously, for a lot of women it is very complicated and where counselling is required it should be, obviously, embedded into services and it needs to be. There is no specific counselling for such women when they come home, but GPs are very creative and they are used to dealing with this problem.