Abortion: ‘Doctors require legal flexibility’

Doctors must be given the legal “flexibility” to decide when they should terminate the pregnancy of a woman at risk of suicide, the country’s most senior obstetrician has said.

The Master of the National Maternity Hospital, Dr Rhona Mahony, said she needed to know she would not be sent to jail for “doing the right thing and saving a woman’s life”.

In a robust presentation to the Oireachtas health committee’s special hearings on abortion, Dr Mahony said legislation must be “broad” and she urged the Government to end the criminalisation of doctors for doing their job.