Pro-life group appalled at provision of abortion services in Cavan General Hospital

Image credit: Choose Life Cavan

A pro-life group in Cavan have said that they are appalled that abortion services are now available at Cavan General Hospital. 

Choose Life Cavan Branch have been actively campaigning in opposition to abortions being provided in the county hospital. Last December they held a prayer protest outside the entrance of the hospital in response to then Health Minister Stephen Donnelly saying that expanding abortion services, including to Cavan General Hospital, was a “main priority”.

“Cavan hospital workers who do not wish to support the provision of abortion services in their work place in 2025 have a legal right to adhere to their conscience and not be involved in the murder of the innocent (57,000 to date on the island of Ireland),” Liam de Paor, one of the groups activists, had said.

In a recent news release, the pro-life group have said that they are appalled “that the HSE and the Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, have now arranged to terminate the lives of innocent little babies from Cavan, Leitrim, Longford and Monaghan at Cavan General Hospital.” 

“Previously, consultants at Cavan General Hospital, as per their Hippocratic oaths, had written to the then Minister for Health, stating their objection to any involvement in providing this deadly life termination service,” they said.

“The government must "wake up" to the fact that abortion numbers have more than tripled since 2018. To date, over 40,000 babies have been killed. During 2024, the number of babies aborted was around 10,000 or equivalent to the population of Cavan town. What has happened to the bodies of those babies?” they asked, querying were some flushed down the toilet, as directed by the HSE, or were some disposed of as hospital waste, or sold for profitable research. 

“GPs were paid fees totalling more than €9.5 m for providing abortion services from 2019 to 2022. So, we can estimate costs to date to the HSE of almost €20 m. The government also admitted to giving €2.3 m of taxpayers’ money to a leading international pro-abortion group since 2022 to terminate the lives of African babies. All this abortion money could have been used to fund extra hospital beds in our overcrowded hospitals.”

“Just consider the grief of all those grandparents who will have no opportunity to meet and love their grandchildren. Or how about those happily married but infertile couples who would be delighted to adopt a child and give one of these babies a good home?”

“There is also the growing scandal of perfectly healthy babies being wrongly diagnosed as having a life-limiting condition and then aborted on the advice of a doctor,” they added, which comes after news on two more babies who were aborted after a misdiagnosis. 

They said that a local woman, Linda Farrelly Smith, a mother of 11-year-old twins from Ballyjamesduff, was advised to abort one of her children by a hospital doctor due to so-called fatal foetal abnormalities. “She is now the proud mother of two healthy girls,” they said. 

“Most mothers considering abortions are being pressured to do so by partners, family and financial pressures. However, practical and professional assistance is available to all those with a crisis pregnancy from Gianna Care, the Society of Vincent de Paul and local Christian church parishes.”

The pro-life group has appealed to “hospital workers to boycott any abortion support services.  Then, any consultant involved would be unable to carry out an abortion, thereby saving the lives of thousands of innocent little babies from a painful death over the next few years. Hospital workers have a constitutional right to follow their conscience and cannot be forced by the HSE to partake in or support the provision of abortion services.”

Sandra Parda of the Life Institute commented, saying: “It is tragic that Cavan General Hospital is now no longer a safe haven for innocent babies. It’s clear that whilst dealing with a health crisis, the government decided to prioritise the murder of unborn children, even though hospital staff at the time did not want it.”

“Instead of focusing on abortion, the government must ensure that appropriate care given for not only the general public, but also for pregnant mothers so that no one feels that they “need” an abortion.”

Every Life Counts is another organisation based in Ireland that provides care to families of babies diagnosed with life-limiting conditions.