An Irish doctor who practiced medicine in a maternity hospital in Africa never once had to take the life of a baby via abortion in order to save the life of a mother. Writing in the Irish Independent, Sr Dr M Duggan, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said: “As head of a maternity department that delivered approximately 10,000 babies a year for more then 30 years, I have never had to take the life of a baby to save the life of a mother. The conditions in which we worked were far more arduous than those in Ireland. In exceptional circumstances, it meant long hours of caring for the mother and closely monitoring the pregnancy, and intercessory prayer for the safety of the mother and baby. Maternal deaths were minimal and mainly due to a ruptured uterus and a delay in getting to the hospital”.
She said that statistics showing the rarity of maternal deaths in Ireland, as reported recently by Professor Michael O’Hara of the Maternal Death Enquiry, supported this contention. He added that the vast majority of those who go to the UK to access abortion, do not do so for reasons of physical health.
The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has issued an unprecedented fundraising appeal to raise money for the TogetherForYes campaign who are seeking to repeal the Eighth Amendment and introduce a radical abortion regime into the country. It is believed to be the first time a sitting Taoiseach has ever used his position to help raise money for a group in a referendum campaign.
Writing on his personal @campaignforleo twitter account, the Taoiseach asked his 152,000 followers: “Can you make a donation? Here’s how:” and included a link to a TogetherForYes financial appeal. That link read: “We hit €350,000, and we can’t stop now!! For the FINAL ask in this crowdfund, will you help us raise €500,000 to get our caring and compassionate YES message into houses across Ireland, with a booklet answering the most common questions people have??”
Finola Bruton has called for a No vote in the forthcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment. Speaking at a meeting last night hosted by the Iona Institute, she said a vote to repeal the amendment on May 25th would be “the first time in history that a constitutional right is being taken away”. Mrs Bruton is a former pregnancy counsellor and wife of ex-Taoiseach, John Bruton.
She said a profoundly utilitarian view of human life was entering into public life and “determining our ethical and moral understanding of what it is to be human”. Ms Bruton said the right to life was “the first and most fundamental of all human rights, without which there can be no others”.
“One cannot exercise any other human right, if one is not allowed to exercise the right to live. We cannot say this often enough. Without being allowed to be born, one can have no civil rights, no free speech, no right to bodily integrity,” she said.
In her speech, Ms Bruton was also critical of the media and of journalists who have spoken about abortion from a pro-choice perspective. She criticised the “dismissal” of what she claimed were “long-term consequences” of abortion to women by professionals, doctors and psychiatrists, describing them as “patronising”.
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!”
