The Pro-life Campaign has expressed alarm over calls for doctors conscientiously objecting to abortion to be monitored by the State.

The calls have come from the state-funded National Women’s Council (NWCI).

The PLC has said said the NWCI “are pressing hard for the Government to start ‘monitoring’ pro-life doctors to make sure they’re helping facilitate abortions”.

Calling the move “a truly terrifying development”, the PLC said the pro-choice lobby group had “raised the issue in media interviews and at a recent meeting of the Oireachtas Health Committee”.

In an op-ed in the Irish Examiner, Orla O’Connor, Director of the National Women’s Council, wrote that “with just one 1 in 10 GPs providing abortions and only half of maternity hospitals providing the service in line with the law, access continues to be a major issue”.

She continued: “We urgently need better data collection and careful monitoring of conscience-based refusal of abortion, as well as Safe Access Zones to ensure all those providing and receiving care can do so in dignity, without fear of harassment or abuse”.