Choice Ireland

Choice Ireland have again called for emergency contraception to be made available over the counter after a report that a GP refused to prescribe it on "religious and ethical" grounds.

The Kerryman newspaper reported this week that a young woman who attended the Tralee SouthDoc out-of-hours clinic on Sunday was turned away and had to travel to Cork the next day to get a prescription.

Spokesperson Sinéad Ahern said:

Choice Ireland will highlight the government's failure to address the issue of crisis pregnancy with a demonstration outside a Rogue Crisis pregnancy agency located at 50 Upper Dorset Street at 1pm on Saturday July 24th. The recent absorption of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency into the HSE, coupled with repeated failures to regulate agencies providing crisis pregnancy counselling demonstrates an unacceptable failure to tackle the very serious issue of crisis pregnancy.

Choice Ireland spokesperson Sinéad Ahern has said that reports of two recent cases abroad in which women have needed abortions for medical reasons underscore the need for legislation to clarify when this procedure can be carried out in Ireland.

Ahern said,

Choice Ireland have responded to Youth Defence advertisements today which attempt to distinguish between abortions and “necessary medical procedures” that result in termination of pregnancies. The adverts claim that where a woman is treated for a condition such as ectopic pregnancy or pre-eclampsia and her foetus dies, this is not an abortion.

 
Statistics released today by the UK Department of Health reveal that 4,422 women giving Irish addresses accessed abortion services in the UK in 2009. This figure which represents at least 12 Irish women a day does not include Irish women who give false UK addresses in order to protect anonymity or those who travel further afield to access abortion services.

The report launched today is the result of an investigation into the reality of abortion in Ireland, which was carried out in 2009. The report examines the real effects of Ireland's restrictive and often unclear abortion laws on women in crisis pregnancy and highlights the increased burdens placed on women forced to leave the state to access medical care.