Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 19 September 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Clinical Guidelines for the Introduction of Abortion Services: Discussion

9:00 am

Dr. Peter Boylan:

I can only endorse what Dr. Murphy has said, particularly with regard to involving women in decisions about their own healthcare and discussing with them their interpretation of what a risk is to them, because everybody's circumstances are different. We cannot define serious risk or serious harm.

Many aspects of this are open to question but because this is a new service it is very important that we get it right from the beginning. We saw this with CervicalCheck. It was not got right from the beginning. It is important that lessons are learned from that experience and that we ensure this is right from the very beginning.