A former chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has reiterated that the Eighth Amendment never affected his ability to provide the best healthcare that women and their babies expect and deserve, even including terminating a pregnancy where necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman. Dr Eamon McGuinness said a doctor’s primary duty lies in saving the mother and “giving her all the help she needs, even if that means that the life of the baby is at risk.
“I have had to do that myself, working under the auspices of the Eighth Amendment. Where a woman has developed a uterine cancer for example, it has meant that I have had to advise and carry out an early termination of pregnancy. Nothing in the law prevented me from doing so.”
He also said the misconception under current law that a woman has to be dying before doctors can intervene to end a pregnancy is untrue. The Medical Council guidelines which all doctors had to adhere to were very clear, he said. “Section 48 stipulates that even if a threat to the mother’s life is not immediate or inevitable it can be acted upon.” Dr McGuinness described as “very disturbing” what amounts to a campaign of fear and misinformation deployed to tarnish the image of Irish medicine and make Irish women fearful of the treatment they might receive.
The leading authority on maternal deaths in Ireland has said there is no evidence of a higher risk of maternal death in Ireland due to the Eighth Amendment. In a letter to the Irish Independent, Michael O’ Hare, a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and the Chairman of the Joint HSE/Institute-of-Obstetrics-and-Gynaecology Working Group on Maternal Mortality based at University College Cork wrote that he was “concerned about misinformation being circulated in the media in respect of an alleged contribution of the Eighth Amendment to maternal mortality and morbidity in Ireland”. The Working Group, MDE Ireland, found that , “the maternal mortality rate in Ireland has not been statistically significantly different from the UK” and, regarding maternal morbidity, “Irish rates compare favourably with published Scottish data”. He said it was important to note that “none of the consecutive reports published by these two national audits of obstetric practice raises any concerns in relation to the Eighth Amendment”. He continued: “The conclusion is obvious – there is no evidence whatever of a higher risk of maternal mortality or severe morbidity in Ireland as a result of the Eighth Amendment”. For further details on the MDE, see this link.
Another leading Obstetrician and Gynecologist has taken issue with reports suggesting that pregnant women’s lives are being put at risk by the Eighth Amendment. Writing in today’s Irish Independent, Dr Mary Holohan, a consultant obstetrician in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, states: “I am concerned that recent statements are causing unnecessary fears for women. They suggest that obstetricians are curtailed in their ability to care for pregnant patients who are seriously ill.” She said across the world, only a tiny proportion of terminations of pregnancy are related to obstetrical care and “Ireland’s law fully provides for the small number of cases relating to necessary obstetric interventions”.
She continued: “Where it arises, the duty to intervene to save the woman’s life is clear. Under the present law we have full freedom and support for the requirements of ethical and safe practice”. She also made the point that in such situations, the threat to the woman’s life “does not need to be imminent” in order for a doctor to intervene, and concluded: “We have the scope of practice needed to guarantee best international standards of care to women in pregnancy. Indeed, Ireland has an excellent record, with very low numbers of women who die in pregnancy.”
Dr Holohan was appointed to the expert group which advised the Department of Health on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. She was also the medical director of the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit in the Rotunda for many years and is currently Director of Examinations and chairperson of the Examinations Committee of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.
A multi-denominational Steering Group has agreed a united response in favour of retaining the 8th Amendment, “Is God for the 8th?”. 120 leaders have now added their names to the agreed pamphlet from a broad spectrum of Churches across Ireland. They include 48 Catholic Clergy and Lay leaders, 16 COI clergy and lay leaders, 15 Methodist, Presbyterian and Baptist leaders, 39 Pentecostal leaders and 2 Messianic Jews. This includes Bishop Phonsie Cullinan of Waterford and leaders of the main African Church and Pentecostal network in Ireland.
The leaflet gives “God’s perspective on the unborn child”. Referring to Genesis, where it says man and woman were made “in the image of God”, it continues: “Only human life has been designed by God to possess His image. From the moment of fertilisation the human embryo is a member of a distinct species, ‘a human being’ rather than any other kind of being. Nobody because of race, sex, physical or mental disability, fails to bear the image of God. There is no ‘quality control’ system in operation before or after birth.”
The leaflet calls for “Responsible Christian Action” – to vote No in the referendum, to pray to God for guidance on how to help women in “challenging pregnancies and possibly unwanted children”, not to judge anyone, be prepared to engage in debate, to financially support “counselling, adoption and caring services”, to pray for politicians and to write to papers.
The leaflet concludes: “We stand at a crossroads for good or for evil. The Eighth Amendment is the last bulwark against abortion in Ireland, recognising the equal right to life for both mother and unborn child. It also represents a forward-thinking approach to human rights which, we hope, will one day be adopted by other nations. Let’s hold fast to this and do what is right.”
The leaflet can be downloaded from this link.
A former chairman of the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Prof Eamon McGuinness, has vigorously defended the medical safety of Ireland’s pro-life laws. Writing in the Irish Times, Prof. McGuinness said a sustained campaign has been waged by some people, including several of his colleagues in obstetrics and gynaecology, to suggest that the Eighth Amendment put women’s lives at risk.
However, he said the Eighth Amendment has one medical effect only: it prevents Irish doctors from deliberately, as an elective matter, causing the death of an unborn child. “It does not restrict doctors from acting to save the life of a woman where a serious complication arises” and, in fact, Medical Council guidelines “oblige doctors to act, even if that means the baby’s life may be lost”.
He said spurious claims are being made about medical practice in Ireland such as that a woman who has cancer while pregnant cannot avail of chemotherapy in Ireland. “This is simply false, and it appals me that such a claim would ever be made about our health service”, he said.
“From where I am seated, it has been very disturbing to see what amounts to a campaign of fear and misinformation deployed to tarnish the image of Irish medicine and make Irish women fearful of the treatment they might receive”.
He concluded: “Terminations required to save a woman’s life are legal in Ireland. They have been legal since 1983. The amendment does not inhibit our ability to treat a woman. It does one thing only – it bans us from intentionally killing one of our patients. I shall vote to retain it”.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland have launched a ferocious broadside against the Minister for Education’s recent circular that schools must provide alternative classes to students who opt-out of religion.
TUI General Secretary John MacGabhann described the policy, which had arrived “out of the blue yonder” without any consultation, as extraordinary, ham-fisted, poorly thought out, badly worded, premature and lacking in resources. He also criticised an apparent inequality in its implementation as it would only apply to ETB schools and community colleges, but not to other schools.
A new sex education Bill proposed by Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger TD seeks to remove religious ethos from the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) curriculum entirely, even in religious schools, and require the curriculum to be delivered “factually and objectively”. At the launch of the Bill in Dublin on Wednesday representatives of the Rape Crisis Network, the National Women’s Council, the Irish Family Planning Association and LGBTQI+ advocacy group ShoutOut called for the removal of “religious ethos” from the teaching of relationships and sexuality education in schools. The launch was also attended by representatives of of Atheist Ireland and UCD Students Union. Ms Coppinger said her Bill would require the religious and sexuality education curriculum to be separated and sex education ‘delivered factually’ to cover contraception, sexuality, gender, LGBTQI+ issues and consent.
The bill received pushback from some unlikely quarters with The Times , Ireland, journalist Sarah Carey responding to the National Women’s Council’s endorsement of the bill by saying she finds it “odd to see people complaining, that saying in school, that sex best practiced in loving relationship is a bad thing, when it’s pretty clear that hypersexualisation masquerading as liberation is clearly not serving young women very well”. She continued: “If we’ve a generation of women who seem to have no confidence in their right to say NO – who live under expectation & pressure that they MUST have sex, why is the ONLY source of positivity around relationship based sex being attacked? By feminists!”
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland is expected to refuse to comply with a directive from the Minister for Education to provide alternative classes to pupils who opt out of religious instruction in ETB schools and community colleges. The union is concerned that no additional resources have been provided to schools to cope with implementing the directive and will vote on whether to cooperate with it at their annual meeting this week.
TUI president Joanne Irwin said the circular had “come out of nowhere” and offered no additional resourcing for its implementation. Addressing Minister for Education Richard Bruton after his speech at the conference on Wednesday she said: “You are expecting schools to offer ‘alternative tuition’ – meaning subjects – to students at the time that religion instruction takes place. How can this be done? Have you even considered the implication this will have for the provision of the 400 hours wellbeing as part of Junior Cycle Reform? Minister, we would have brought all these concerns to you if you or your Department consulted with us. Why, Minister, are you singling out some schools and not others?
The planned revision of the school sex education programme announced by Education Minister, Richard Bruton, must accord with the wishes of parents, Iona Institute Director, David Quinn, has said. Speaking to The Irish Times he stated that the Institute had “no objection in principle [to consent being taught in schools], always keeping in mind that parents are the primary educators, with the schools as back-up.” He hoped that “as well as being taught what proper consent is, the children would also learn to get to know and like each other properly first”. At primary level, he said he would hope this would not be before sixth class and that it would be taught in an age appropriate way. He also said “the ethos of the school has to be taken into account”.
Minister Bruton has asked policymakers to review the 20-year-old curriculum on relationships and sexuality education (RSE) to ensure it meets the needs of young people in Ireland today with a special emphasis on information on sexual consent at both primary and secondary level. In addition, he wants topics such as safe use of the internet, the effect of social media on relationships and LGBT issues to be included in sexual education classes at both primary and secondary level.
Speaking on RTE’s Sean O’Rourke show, Minister Bruton said that the challenges young people face have changed dramatically since the RSE programme was first put in place, “for example, we voted for marriage equality, we have changed the definition of consent”. He continued: “I am asking specifically that some issues would be looked at, issues such as consent, the role of social media and internet use, the role of LGBTQ+ matters which have clearly become much more prominent”.
Parents and students are to be consulted on whether smartphones should be allowed in schools. The use of smartphones and tablet devices among young people has been a source of rising concern, with some campaigners calling for an outright ban. Minister for Education Richard Bruton is to issue a circular to all schools shortly asking them to decide whether smartphone or tablet devices should be permitted and, if so, in what circumstances. The Minister’s position stands in stark contrast to Government policy on the age of digital consent for social media accounts. The EU allows member States to set the age anywhere between 13 and 16. While countries such as France and Germany have set it at the maximum possible, Ireland have decided to set it at the minimum possible, precisely because they thought a child’s welfare might require the child having access to social media despite the objections of their parents.
