Large numbers of non-consultant hospital doctors (NCHDs) working in maternity units outside Dublin are Muslims from abroad, according to Dr Trevor Hayes of Kilkenny’s St Luke’s Hospital, who says he had been personally told that they have serious religious qualms about performing abortions.
“A lot of the NCHDs – a lot of the registrars and senior registrars and SHOs (senior house officers), so the front line – would be from Egypt, Sudan, and generally Muslim countries,” Dr Hayes told The Irish Catholic.
“These would be in the country hospitals, and because of that they have frontline exposure, and they would have religious objections to be involved in the abortion service.”
Dr Hayes, who was named Obstetrician of the Year in 2009 and 2013 by Maternity and Infant Magazine said a dependence on Muslim consultants is preventing Cavan General Hospital from introducing an abortion service, and that he suspects that conscientious objections from Muslims could block abortions from taking place in 12 of the country’s 19 maternity units.
“I’m not professing that I have huge knowledge about Islam, but they have religious objections to being involved in it,” he said.
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