Push for buffer zones in Ireland follows pro-life vigil outside Dublin hospital

Dublin, Ireland, Jul 17, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Documents from the Republic of Ireland’s health department show that abortion services are limited at nine of the country’s 19 maternity hospitals, in part due to conscientious objectors.

In a May 2018 referendum, Irish voters repealed a constitutional amendment recognizing the right to life of unborn children and equal to mothers’ right to life. Legislators then enacted legislation allowing legal abortion.

Ireland now permit medical abortions to be performed by general practitioners through nine weeks of pregnancy. Hospitals are allowed to perform surgical abortions through 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, abortions may be performed in “exceptional circumstances.”

The law permits medical professionals who conscientiously object to abortion to refrain from participation in the procedure; however, doctors who object to abortion must refer women to doctors who will perform them.

A statement from the Department of Health, obtained by TheJournal.ie, says that “the HSE [Health Service Executive] has advised that where conscientious objection has arisen in relation to the provision of termination of pregnancy services, hospital groups are working with the hospitals in question to find an appropriate solution.”

Of the nine maternity hospitals that do not offer full abortion services, five are due to to “operational issues”, and four are related to conscientious objection and recruitment, according to an April update sent to the national health department.

Some of the hospitals are small, and have argued that abortion provision there would be unnecessarily expensive.

South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel, about 30 miles south of Thurles, has “the smallest number of births in the country (900 a year) and maternity services represent a small part of its activities; to establish a service in the hospital will require dedicated clinics, which may have little or no demand”, according to one of the documents.

The HSE added that abortion provision at South Tipperary “would not represent optimal use of scarce resources given the proximity of STGH to other hospitals providing the service.”

The health department has said it is “extremely disappointed that, at this stage, there are still only 10 hospitals providing full ToP (termination of pregnancy) services”.

“From the outset the Minister and the Department have been very clear that government policy is to normalise ToP service provision within our maternity hospitals and that services will be provided from all 19 maternity hospitals,” the Department of Health stated.

“In that context, it is not acceptable that the NWIHP [National Women & Infants Health Programme] should seek to defer introduction of the service on the basis of low demand or because of sufficient regional coverage or, indeed, because of preference to provide services on a networked basis.”

Dr. Trevor Hayes, a consultant obstetrician/gynecologist at St. Luke’s General Hospital in Kilkenny, maintained at a July 6 pro-life rally in Dublin that health minister Simon Harris is “obsessing with abortion” and is “trying to bully good men and women to get involved in their abortion against their conscience.”

Continued pressure to back abortion would force doctors, nurses and other medical professionals out of medicine and add to “the staffing crisis already crippling the health service,” Hayes predicted.

Hayes is one of several consultant colleagues at St. Luke’s who have told management they would not perform abortions. He told that rally that abortion is “a procedure that helps no one and takes the life of the child … Abortion is not life-saving, it’s life-ending. It’s not health care, and no amount of spin can make it health care.”

The health department’s documents show that “it is unlikely” that abortion service will begin at St. Luke’s General Hospital in 2019.

In May, the Irish bishops’ conference objected to job requirements mandating that certain consultant doctors be willing to participate in abortions, saying the country’s abortion law had promised to safeguard conscience rights for medical professionals.

An advertisement for two consultants, for obstetrics/gynecology and anesthesia, at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin says applicants must be willing to participate in abortions.

“This precondition runs totally counter to a doctor’s constitutional and human right to freedom of conscience,” said the bishops.

The bishops’ conference said such preconditions may rule out the best possible person for the job by eliminating candidates solely because they are unwilling to perform abortions.

“A doctor who is eminently qualified to work as a consultant in these fields is denied employment in these roles because of his/her conscience,” said the bishops.

“Doctors who are pro-life and who may have spent over a decade training in these areas and who may otherwise be the best candidate for these positions are now advised that, should they apply, they would not be eligible for consideration,” they said.

A spokesman for the National Maternity Hospital argued that the specific posts were funded by the HSE for the purpose of abortions.

“They are therefore for individuals willing to contribute to the provision of these services. Other past and future posts are not affected. The conscientious objection guidelines for staff in both hospitals remain unchanged,” the spokesman said, according to RTE.

At least 640 general practitioners in Ireland signed a petition in November objecting to the new obligation of referring patients to other doctors for abortions.

The majority of the country’s 2,500 GPs are unwilling to perform abortions. Only between 4 and 6 percent of GPs have said they would participate in the procedure.

At the July 6 All Ireland Rally for Life, Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, said: “I march today because I believe it remains as important as ever to affirm the sanctity of all human life. The direct and intentional taking of the life of any innocent human being is always gravely wrong – we must avoid becoming desensitized to the value of every human life.”

He called for more help for vulnerable women, for mothers and fathers who are in crisis, and for “parents who feel that they have made the wrong choice in having an abortion.”

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Edinburgh, Scotland, Jan 15, 2020 / 02:15 pm (CNA).- A Scottish bishop accused of committing plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation told CNA that while he never intentionally committed any act of plagiarism, he will accept whatever consequences might come from the accusation.

“I can categorically state that there was absolutely never any intention to plagiarise any work,” Bishop Stephen Robson of Dunkeld, Scotland, told CNA January 14th.

The bishop’s remarks came in response to a 2019 article in the scholarly journal Analecta Cisterciensia, written by the journal’s editor, Fr. Alkuin Schachenmayr, a Cistercian priest living in an Austrian monastery.

The article claimed that “there seem to be dozens of passages in Robson’s dissertation which are apparently identical or remarkably similar to texts published by other scholars, yet the author does not attribute these sources.”

“My work was checked every stage by Father Herbert Alphonso SJ my supervisor, now deceased. I repeat, whatever the person you mention has claimed, there was never any intention to deceive or plagiarise. I was simply trying to understand St Bernard a bit better,” Robson said.

Robson completed his dissertation, “With the Spirit and Power of Elijah (Lk 1,17). The Prophetic-Reforming Spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux as Evidenced Particularly in his Letters,” at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University in 2003.

The text was awarded the university’s 2004 Premio Bellarmino, the annual prize given to the best dissertation completed at the university.

“One must ask whether the jury responsible for awards of excellence at the Gregorian succeeded in identifying one of the institution’s best dissertations of 2003,” Schachenmayr wrote.

Robson’s dissertation was also published as a 2004 book by the Gregorian University’s publishing house.

And while Robson insisted that he had no intention to plagiarize, he told CNA that he will accept the judgment of his alma mater regarding his dissertation.

“I am happy for the Gregorian to nullify my text if they think fit,” the bishop said.
 
Schachenmayr’s study noted that Robbson’s dissertation contained several passages identical or nearly identical to already published scholarship. Those passages give no indication of their source material.

Among the scholars from whom Robson apparently copied are Bruno Scott James, Jean Leclercq, Friedrich Kempf, and Robert Bartlett, according to Schachenmayr.

Some of those scholars were mentioned as sources in his dissertation, even while particular verbatim passages from them were reproduced without citation. In other cases, identical or nearly identical passages from published scholars who were never referenced as sources at all were included in the dissertation, Schachenmayr showed.

Schachenmayr also suggested that Robson might have used a plagiaristic technique called the “pawn sacrifice,” in order to avoid detection of plagiarism.

“Citing some sources with apparently great vigilance can be used as a way of distracting the reader from the fact that other passages are not properly cited,” Schachenmayr explained.

Regarding the scholars from whom Schachenmayr reports he seems to have plagiarized, Robson told CNA: “I recognise some of the authors you have quoted and did quote from them.”

Still, he said, “the authors cited can only have been a minor part of what work I did as far as I can remember.”

Robson told CNA that he completed his studies- a doctorate in sacred theology as well as a licentiate in canon law- while he was serving as a spiritual director for seminarians at the Pontifical Scots College, where he was assigned from 1998 to 2006.

He studied during that time “to prevent myself going mad,” the bishop said.

“I have never claimed to be an academic and have not touched any study – I have not had time – since I came home,” he added.

“The studies were never really important to me – simply a means to spending what would have been otherwise an uncomfortable few years in the heat of Rome.”

“My directees were the much more important part of my work,” the bishop added.

Robson is a convert to Catholicism; he became a Catholic in his late teens. The bishop was ordained a priest in 1979, and worked in pastoral ministry, and as secretary to the eventually disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who resigned from the rights and duties of a cardinal in 2015 amid allegations of predatory sexual behavior toward priests and seminarians. 

Robson was assigned to the Scottish seminary in Rome in 1998.

He told CNA he “had no desire to become a bishop…and yet was appointed in 2012 as an auxiliary bishop and as an Ordinary since 2013.”

After two years as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Robson became Bishop of Dunkeld in January 2014.

The bishop served from 2013-2015 as a member of the McLellan Commission, which studied the Catholic Church in Scotland’s handling of clerical sexual abuse claims and the culture that allowed abuse to occur.

Priests who know Robson described him to CNA as a supporter of his priests, “a Catholic, and a believer.”

The bishop is regarded as an outspoken pro-life advocate and an advocate for Catholic education. In 2019, the bishop launched in his diocese a “Year of Re-Evangelisation” and a formation program for catechists.

That initiative, he said, was inspired by Pope Francis.

“His vision of missionary discipleship is something that really struck me but more than that his manner was so open, especially about making our parishes places of missionary disciples. All we can do now is try,” Robson told the Scottish Catholic Observer in January 2019.

At the bishop’s installation Mass in 2014, he told Catholics that “to build up communion in love means concentrated work, and that can be only done with time and many, many hands to help that.”

“Pastoral work, the work of a shepherd, involves being able to serve the people,” he said.

In addition to leaving a decision about his dissertation in the hands of the Gregorian University, Robson said he will accept any other consequences that might come from the allegation of plagiarism.

“I am sure Francis has far more worrying things to fret about than me. But if he wants my resignation, he may have it freely,” the bishop said.

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Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer with Ukrainian refugees in front of Msgr. Georg Ratzinger’s former home. / Jakob Schötz/Diocese of Regensburg.

Regensburg, Germany, Mar 24, 2022 / 05:20 am (CNA).
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