The Medical Alliance for Life has asked the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, to guarantee that medical staff and doctors will not be prosecuted for refusing to facilitate abortions. The published heads of the proposed abortion bill allows GPs to not administer abortions personally to their patients, but obliges them to refer those patients to another doctor who will. A spokesperson for the Alliance, GP, Dr Andrew O’Regan, said they want the Minister “to fully respect and protect the right to conscientious objection for all healthcare professionals and to ensure that nobody can be prosecuted for refusing to facilitate abortion.”

If medical practitioners, nurses and midwives were opposed abortion, then they would be unwilling to be involved in the process and refer women on. “If someone is saying that it goes against my entire conscience and everything I am about, and goes against everything that I understand as good healthcare, then I am not going to refer it either,” he said. “The big buzz word during the campaign was ‘choice’. What about the choice of the doctors who say this isn’t what we signed up for?”

Doctors for Life, another group representing medics which campaigned for a No vote in the referendum, said it would be “a clear voice for those healthcare professionals who do not wish to use their skills against the weakest members of society, of any age.”

“We will not perform any action to deliberately end the life of any of our patients,” said the group in a message posted online after the referendum result.