The Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) has accused the Government of neglecting patient safety over a rush to introduce abortion legislation.
Reacting to media reports of an alleged war of words between the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar and the Health Service Executive (HSE) over failure to implement patient safety recommendations handed down in the wake of the death, by sepsis, of Savita Halappanavar, the PLC’s Cora Shelrock described as “a scandal” the two-year delay since the expectant mother’s death for new safety guidelines to be introduced when abortion legislation was drawn up much faster arising from the same case.
“It raises very important questions about Government priorities,” Ms Sherlock said. “The Government wasted no time in exploiting the Savita tragedy to get abortion legislation over the line.”
“If the primary concern had been protecting women’s lives, expediting proper guidelines on the management of sepsis in pregnancy would have happened earlier but it was clear that nothing, not even patient safety, was going to get in the way of securing legislation on abortion – legislation by the way that had nothing to do with the Savita case or safeguarding the lives of pregnant women.”
Lamenting as “deplorable” the Government’s failure to fully implement the new sepsis guidelines, Ms Sherlock added: “If the Government had shown the same commitment in delivering on proper guidelines for patient safety as it did in pushing through abortion legislation, there wouldn’t be a problem.”
Savita Halappanavar died in October 2012 at University Hospital Galway as a result of sepsis during complications with her pregnancy. Following media reports that a refusal to perfom an abortion had led to the woman’s death, there was much heated debate in Ireland about the country’s abortion regime. The case, in part, led to the formulation of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013, despite a finding in the case that the hospital’s failed monitoring of her condition allowed for a fatal onset of sepsis, which could not have been countered by providing an abortion.