Monday, December 17, 2012

We'd rather give up medicine than perform an abortion


The Irish Independent on Saturday reported on the story of Maria Coleman who had just started medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons when she became pregnant through difficult circumstances. Canadian by birth, she grew up in a culture where abortion is available on demand up to full term. Maria's sharing of her life and values is very powerful and very relevant here in Ireland today.
 According to the article
The 24-year-old went to her GP and was told that abortion was the best route to take; that having a baby would mess up her career. Maria was surprised. It was the sort of reaction she expected from a Canadian doctor, not an Irish one.

By that point she had made her mind up anyway. That happened the moment she did a pregnancy test.

"From the second it showed positive, I knew there was another life growing inside me," she recalls.

"There was no denying that. As easy as it might have seemed to get rid of the 'problem', I knew I had no right to end another human life."

Almost three years on, Maria has a beautiful two-year-old boy who is the light of her life. Now in her third year of medicine, she's also a first-class honours student.

Her personal experience has deeply informed her professional ethic as a young medic planning to specialise in obstetrics. She has observed the recent abortion controversy here with deep concern, fearing that if Ireland legislates for abortion, it will end up going down the road of her own country, where up to 100,000 terminations take place every year.

"We all know there is no difference between a baby five minutes before it's born and five minutes afterwards, but in Canada, they don't consider it a human being until it has arrived in the delivery ward," she says.

"Until the baby has fully exited the birth canal, anything can be done. In a 10-year period, about 490 babies have been born alive in Canada after failed abortions. They are left to die on a cold table.

"For me, as a trainee doctor, that is nothing less than criminal. Every day in college, we are reminded of our Hippocratic oath which we take on graduation – 'above all, do no harm'.

Maria has decided to continue her medical career in Ireland but may change her mind if abortion is legalised.

"I would give up medicine before doing that sort of work. I just have to look at my son to realise that. He's the best thing that ever happened to me."

 The full text of the article can be found here