The National Maternity Hospital is advertising for consultant obstetricians who, as part of their job description, must perform abortions. This is the first ad to ever appear in this country that has as a job requirement the deliberate ending of a human life. Truly a terrible moral boundary has been crossed. But the ad tells us something else, namely that some of our hospitals cannot currently find enough doctors willing to perform abortions. This a very good thing.

Add to this a letter, just issued by 35 pro-choice organisations which laments the fact that the roll-out of abortions ‘services’ has been slow meaning only a “select few” can so far access abortion. Clearly resistance in the medical profession to abortion has been greater than anticipated.

The Irish Times reports today that only 274 out of more than 3,000 GPs in the country are willing to prescribe the abortion pill, and in some parts of the country, there are no GPs doing so.

It also reports that only 10 out of the country’s 21 maternity units are performing abortions and, as we have seen, even those which are carrying out terminations cannot find as many doctors as they would like who are willing to do so.

A different kind of media would give more prominence to these facts and rather less to the story that an obscure pro-life outfit from America called ‘Sidewalk Advocates for Life’ intends setting up protests outside abortion facilities all over Ireland, something they have zero chance of achieving.

As the months and year pass, the HSE and the medical colleges will do their best to ensure that as many doctors as possible are willing to facilitate abortion. Efforts will be made over time to reduce the number of pro-life doctors working in the profession. That said, we have to be grateful that for now at least the Government is failing in its bid to make abortion easily available in this country.