Lawyer Julie Kay, who won a judgement at the European Court of Human Rights against Ireland’s ban on abortion, argues that restrictions on abortion related to the life or health of the mother are unacceptable. “There are,” she writes, “no guidelines for doctors on the distinction between a medical procedure necessary to preserve a woman’s life versus a procedure that would merely protect her health.” She describes this distinction as “bogus.” [Slate]
Category: Abortion
Irish panel of appointees recommends compulsory referral for abortion
In a long-awaited report, a panel appointed by the Irish government to study the operation of the abortion law in Ireland has stated the government is obliged to provide guidelines that establish how women in Ireland can obtain abortions consistent with Irish law. It recommends that a physician who objects to abortion for reasons of conscience should be forced to facilitate the procedure by referring a patient to a willing colleague, and to provide an abortion “when the risk of death is imminent and inevitable.” The report is not clear on the extent to which conscientious objection might be allowed to other health care workers. [Report, p. 42, 6.9]
American obstetrician comments on death of woman in Ireland
Obstetrician Lisa Harris, whose column in the New England Journal of Medicine asserted that protection of conscience laws fail to recognize that abortion providers are motivated by conscientious convictions, repeated her arguments in an interview with the New Scientist magazine. While she admitted that the circumstances of the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland are not clear, she speculated that the Halappanavar might not have died had an abortion been provided. She stated that similar problems arise in denominational hospitals in the United States. She described the case of a woman who was referred to her with a “septic abortion ” because the foetus was still alive, and the religiously affilicated hospital where she was first treated would not induce an abortion. [New Scientist]
World Health Organization demands referral for abortion
Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems, a newly revised publication of the World Health Organization, claims that objecting health care workers have an ethical responsibility to refer patients for abortion, or to provide abortions if referral is not possible. (Sec. 3.3.6, p. 69, Box 3.2,p. 73). It also claims that conscientious objection without referral is a barrier to health care and that referral is a legal obligation under human rights law. Chapter 4 of the text, which is the basis for these demands, was revised under the guidance of the Programme on International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada (p. 11). Two professors from this faculty, Rebecca Cook and Bernard Dickens, have been making such claims for years. They have, in the past, seriously misrepresented the law on this point in an effort to make referral for abortion mandatory. (See Postscript for the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada: Morgentaler vs. Professors Cook and Dickens, and Conscientious Objection as a Crime Against Humanity.) The WHO document has been reviewed and criticized by Susan Yoshihara of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, but awaits a critique by medical and legal professionals.
Controversy in Ireland over death of woman after abortion refused
The death of a 31 year old woman at the Galway University Hospital last month is generating enormous controversy in Ireland. Savita Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant when she presented with back pain on 21 October. Reports indicate that she was miscarrying, but that the foetus was still alive. She requested an abortion several times but was refused. The foetus was removed surgically once its heart stopped two days later. She developed septicaemia and died on 29 October. Several investigations are underway. [Irish Times]