A chara, – To act in accordance with one’s conscience is the basis of personal and professional integrity. It is also, therefore, essential to the creation and maintenance of trust, be that between politicians and their constituents or healthcare professionals and their patients.
Minister for Health James Reilly claims the legislation currently before the Dáil respects the conscientious objections of healthcare professionals who do not wish to participate in abortions. It does no such thing.
I have worked in the UK and I have seen the myriad subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, means by which the rights of conscience can be subverted even while ostensibly protected. Section 17 of the proposed legislation does not provide even such meagre protection. Indeed, given the Taoiseach’s flagrant contempt for the genuine conscientious objections of his own party colleagues on this most sensitive and fundamental of matters, healthcare professionals have little reason to believe that this part of the legislation is anything other than another instance of the Orwellian doublespeak, in which Enda Kenny has acquired such chilling fluency.
Many other correspondents have articulated the inhumanity of the proposed legislation but, in its disdain for conscience, it also threatens to corrupt the practice of healthcare and to debase the practice of politics.
This legislation is intellectually threadbare, politically incoherent, and ethically abhorrent. It is to be hoped that, in the coming days, notwithstanding the intimidation and coercion of the Fine Gael leadership, many more of our parliamentarians will display the courage to follow their conscience, defend their integrity, and restore some trust to our decaying democracy. – Is mise,
JAMES M CARR, MPSI,
Chief II Pharmacist,
St Vincent’s Private
Hospital, Dublin 4.