Category: Protection of Conscience Project

A “medical misadventure” in Ireland

Deaths of Savita & Prasa Halappanavar

Galway, Ireland: 21-28 October, 2012

Sean Murphy*

Savita Halappanavar was a 31 year old woman who was 17 weeks pregnant when she presented at the University Hospital, Galway, on 21 October, 2012, with a miscarriage.  She spontaneously delivered a stillborn daughter, Prasa, on the afternoon of 24 October, and died from sepsis early on 28 October.  The circumstances of her death generated a hurricane of controversy in Ireland and around the world about Irish abortion law.  A coroner’s inquest held in Galway in April, 2013 resulted in the classification of Savita’s death as a “medical misadventure.”

What follows is a chronological account of Savita’s care and treatment from 21 to 28 October, drawn from newspaper reports of the evidence taken at the inquest.  [Read more . . .]

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Protection of conscience initiative launched by New Zealand health care professionals

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate release

Protection of Conscience Project

The New Zealand Health Care Professionals Alliance Te Hononga Mãtanga Haurora O Aortearoa has launched a website highlighting the interest of the Alliance in freedom of conscience in health care.  The new site features a Best Practice Guide, Patient Support and Resources, and an introduction to the Alliance’s Mentorship Programme.

The Alliance is a non-denominational organization that welcomes members from all health care professions, including nurses & midwives, doctors, radiographers, pharmacists, laboratory technologists, anaesthetic technicians, and radiation therapists.  Hospital chaplains may also join.  Membership is open to professionals in training, practice and retirement who support the purposes of the organization.

Sean Murphy, Administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project, offered his congratulations to the Alliance.

“Since the Project began in 1999, it has emphasized the importance of local initiatives of this kind,” he said, “and especially the need for health care professionals to become active in support of their own fundamental freedoms.”

“The people best placed to respond to pressures against freedom of conscience in health care are those closest to the action,” Murphy explained.  “New Zealanders know best what challenges they face in their own country, and how to respond effectively to them.  The history of the Alliance demonstrates that quite clearly.”

The New Zealand Health Professionals Alliance (NZHPA) was incorporated in 2009 in response to an attempt by the Medical Council of New Zealand to suppress freedom of conscience by means of a direction called Beliefs and Medical Practice.  Relying on the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, the NZHPA applied to the High Court for a judicial review of the draft statement because it considered it unlawful.  The court supported the NZHPA, and the Medical Council ultimately decided not to publish the direction.

Uruguay’s Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy Act

 Protection of conscience provisions may be defined out of existence

Sean Murphy*

In the fall of 2012 the Uruguayan legislature passed the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy Act, which legalized abortion in the country under certain circumstances.  By January, 2013, Reuters was reporting that the law was meeting “fierce opposition” among Uruguayan gynaecologists, with up to a third of them refusing to provide the procedure for reasons of conscience;1 in some locations, almost none will do so. . . Full Text

Facebook abortion ads: no need for coerced referrals

Sean Murphy*

The  Life Issues Institute reports that ads are being run on Facebook in the United Kingdom that offer women assistance in finding nearby abortion facilities, including late-term abortion specialists.  The ads demonstrate that there is no need to force objecting health care workers to facilitate abortion by referral or by providing abortionist contact information, as access to abortion can be easily facilitated by popular social media and websites.

“Normalisation of cruelty” and the ‘ethics of the profession’

Sean Murphy*

A court in the United Kingdom has awarded £410,000 ($663,000) in damages to 38 plaintiff families for an extraordinary cataloque of neglect, abandonment and abuse at the National Health Service’s Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, England.  The incidents occurred between 2002 and 2009.  Britain’s Health Secretary said that the case illustrates “the normailisation of cruelty.”  One elderly patient was left unwashed for 11 weeks and another was starved to death. [RTE Question More; The Telegraph]