GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Leading Irish hospital makes willingness to do abortions a condition of employment

domingo, 24 de febrero de 2019

BioEdge: Leading Irish hospital makes willingness to do abortions a condition of employment

BioEdge: Leading Irish hospital makes willingness to do abortions a condition of employment

Bioedge

Leading Irish hospital makes willingness to do abortions a condition of employment

by Michael Cook | 24 Feb 2019 |

Only doctors who are willing to perform abortions will be considered for two consultant posts at Dublin’s National Maternity Hospital. The hospital is advertising for a consultant anaesthetist and a consultant in obstetrics and gynaecology.

According to a statement from the NMH the positions include the “provision of termination-of-pregnancy services, and are for individuals willing to contribute to the provision of these services”.

A source at the hospital told the Irish Times that conscientious objection guidelines for existing staff would remain as they were before.

Baroness Nuala O’Loan, of Northern Ireland, recently warned that the Republic would be entering “uncharted territory” if it made willingness to perform abortions a condition of employment. What if doctors changed their mind, feeling in conscience that they could no longer participate in abortions, she asked.

After a referendum last year which allowed abortion to be legalised, Ireland is expanding its services quickly to provide abortions. The health department’s budget provides €7 million in funding for abortion services this year and €12 million in 2020.

It’s hard to think of a more volatile topic than transgender transitions for children entering puberty. The number of kids demanding puberty-blockers so that they can transition to the opposite sex is exploding all over the developed world. It’s a mysterious and poorly understood phenomenon which involves a range of bioethical issues.

Is gender dysphoria really a medical issue at all? Or is it just a waystation on a spectrum of sexualities? How do we decide? Is it ethical to offer treatments which have yet to prove their efficacy? Is it ethical to offer treatments which will have negative side-effects? How can children make decisions which will affect their whole lives without understanding the medical, sexual and psychological implications? There is enough here to fill a library with contending points of view.

But this is far from being a theoretical issue. Children with gender dysphoria are suffering now. Who is to decide how can they be best cared for? A bioethicist writing in the American Journal of Bioethics effectively argues that parents are not the best judges. (See article below.) They are in the same position as loving, well-intentioned parents who want to use herbal remedies for their child’s cancer. Doctors, backed by governments, should decide. The state has to step in to save the child from suffering and even death.

It’s a controversial, even incendiary, point of view. But that is the way the debate is heading. We can expect to hear more, much more, in the future.