Category: Procedures & Services

Message to Irish lawmakers: “Exceptions don’t work”

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]

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]

Australian bill permits causing patient death, lacks adequate conscience protection

The House of Assembly in the Parliament of South Australia has passed the Advanced Care Directives Bill (2012), which defines medical treatment and health care so as to include nutrition and hydration, and makes it possible for nutrition and hydration to be refused or denied even to patient who isnot dying.  The  protection of conscience provision in the bill requires objectors to facilitate the withdrawal of food and fluids by providing contact information for someone willing to do so, and to refer the patient to that person if requested. The bill also allows patient directives to override denominational or institutional codes of conduct governing the delivery of health care. [The Australian]

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]