Ireland’s Health Service Executive (HSE) has had to to conceal the identities of staff members engaged in drafting a document on medically challenging pregnanciesbecause of an angry backlash from some pro-choice staff against some of the language being used in the document.
According to The Irish Catholic newspaper, during the drafting stage of the HSE’s ‘Bereavement Care Standards following Pregnancy Loss and Perinatal Death‘, a row broke out between staff over the terminology to be used when describing pregnancies where the child might not live long after birth.
Emails were exchanged in which terminology to be used in the document was discussed. Thus, while the final document, released in July uses terms such as “life-limiting foetal anomalies”, and refers to conditions as “known to be life limiting” and giving a “poor prognosis of life”, these had originally used terms like “fatal foetal anomalies” and “incompatible with life”, terms regularly used by pro-choice campaigners.
The changed terminology issue was pursued under a Freedom of Information request by The Irish Times newspaper, which subsequently led to the revelation that the HSE was withholding the names of staff involved in email exchanges on the matter. The HSE explained that “there are precedents where colleagues have been pursued in an inappropriate fashion”. This action was undertaken under Section 32 of the Freedom of Information Act 2013, which allows for the withholding of information if access to it could “reasonably be expected to […] endanger the life or safety of any person”.
Reacting to the revelation, Cora Sherlock of the Pro-Life Campaign (PLC) described as “unsettling” that staff who had suggested “perfectly reasonable changes” needed to be afforded protection.
The HSE has said that all terms have been reviewed in conjunction with national and international research. A review of international medical literature published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2012 revealed no agreed list of conditions that could indisputably be deemed fatal, with survival past birth having been reported in all conditions typically described as fatal.
