Problems In Ireland W/ Abortion Law

[Anomaly]

An gripping tragedy in Ireland, that has outlawed abortion, except (supposedly) in the case of danger to the mother.

How do you define that?

[url="http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/8459870/77794064/Thousands_march_for_abortion_rights_in_Ireland"]http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr/8459870/77794064/Thousands_march_for_abortion_rights_in_Ireland[/url]
DUBLIN (AP) — About 10,000 people marched through Dublin and observed a minute's silence Saturday in memory of the Indian dentist who died of blood poisoning in an Irish hospital after being denied an abortion.
Marchers, many of them mothers and daughters walking side by side, chanted "Never again!" and held pictures of [url="http://features.rr.com/topic/Savita_Halappanavar"]Savita Halappanavar[/url] as they paraded across the city to stage a nighttime candlelit vigil outside the office of Prime Minister [url="http://features.rr.com/topic/Enda_Kenny"]Enda Kenny[/url].
The 31-year-old, who was 17 weeks pregnant with her first child, died Oct. 28 one week after being hospitalized with severe pain at the start of a miscarriage. Her death, made public by her husband this week, has highlighted Ireland's long struggle to come to grips with abortion.
Doctors refused her requests to remove the fetus until its heartbeat stopped four days after her hospitalization. Hours later she became critically ill and her organs began to fail. She died three days later from blood poisoning. Her widower and activists say she could have survived, and the spread of infection been stopped, had the fetus been removed sooner.
The case illustrates a 20-year-old confusion in abortion law in Ireland, where the practice is outlawed in the constitution. A 1992 Supreme Court ruling decreed that abortions should be legal to save the life of the woman, including if she makes credible threats to commit suicide if denied one. But successive governments have refused to pass legislation spelling out the rules governing that general principle, leaving the decision up to individual doctors in an environment of secrecy.
Kenny's government says it needs to await the findings of two investigations into [url="http://features.rr.com/topic/Savita_Halappanavar"]Halappanavar[/url]'s death before taking any action. It has declined to say if it will pass legislation to make the 1992 judgment the clear-cut, detailed law of the land. Many doctors say they fear being targeted by lawsuits or protests — or even charged with murder — if they perform an abortion to safeguard a pregnant woman's life.
Speakers from socialist parties, women's groups and abortion rights activists addressed Saturday's crowd from atop a flat-bed truck. They decried the fact that two decades had passed without any political decision to define when hospitals could, and could not, perform abortions.

more at Link above.

[zabbazooey]

I was wondering when this was going to be posted...

[Mark of the Cross]

oops

Edited November 19, 2012 by Mark of the Cross

[Archaeology cat]

I'd like to know more details. Could they not have started treating the septicemia earlier, though? Even if the baby would've been adversely affected?

[Archaeology cat]

This is, of course, a horrible tragedy.

[Jesus_lol]

Well, its pretty obvious whatever they did had the opposite effect as what the pro life law is supposed to ensure.

[morostheos]

http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2012/11/exploiting-tragedy.html

This blog provides a good summary of the issues.

[zabbazooey]

I know that many here are prolife. Is there anything about this law that can be fixed or changed so that something like this doesn't happen in the future? If they already knew it was not a viable pregnancy and she was ALREADY miscarrying, they KNEW the fetus would not survive, then why couldn't they do something? I know it stops the fetal heartbeat but...to me it makes no sense. And the issues with this particular law inadvertently caused an additional unnecessary death.

[Noel's angel]

This is probably the worst reported issue I have come across in my life. Ireland's abortion legislation permits abortion ONLY in cases where the mother's [b]life[/b] is in danger. No evidence has surfaced to state that having an abortion would have saved this poor lady, in fact, what appears to be the prime cause of her death is the fact that although she became ill on the Sunday, doctors didn't give her antibiotics until Tuesday.
There were not 10,000 people at the rally, in fact the gardai (Irish police) put the number at about 700.

The pro-abortionists also were tipped off to this story days before it was in the press, allowing them to use it to their best advantage.
This is NOTHING to do with the legislation, and everything to do with the decisions the doctors made. The husband has already given conflicting stories regarding what happened, also.

[morostheos]

The link I posted also states that the Irish legislations allows doctors to induce labor when the life of the mother is in danger, even if the chance of the baby surviving is slim to none. As Noel's Angel said, this the a case of poor medical care and was not at all restricted by the ban on abortion that exists in Ireland.

[Aloysius]

indeed. any ideas I would have thought of to improve the abortion laws in Ireland to prevent something like this from happening appear to already be in place in the Abortion law in Ireland, and it looks like this incident was not a result of the abortion laws but that there are opportunists seizing upon a woman's death to try to advance an agenda here. I very much hope that they do not succeed. The Irish Government should probably find a way to simply reiterate the provisions of the existing law to ease the tensions of those who are currently outraged by making them think something has been done about it, I really hope they don't cave and expand abortion in that country, that would be a very sad day indeed.

[Anomaly]

Regardless of the details or circumstances of this specific case, it was bringing up the point that Ireland does not have a legal definition of when it can be determined the life of the mother is in danger. That is the direction of my questions.
-Is there a legal definition in Irish law?
-If so, what is it?
-How do you set legally applicable standards? What is the % risk to mother? 100%, 90%, 51%, 5%?
-Who gets to determine the odds for the Mothers? How could that be determined?

It seems applying real world circumstances when addressing ideals is very problematic.

[Aloysius]

honestly, I don't know where the Irish law defines it, but I would assume it'd be something that would be the decision of the doctors but would be open to an ethics board review consisting of experts to analyze the case and determine if the doctor made the right choice, there are such board reviews in hospitals for many types of things, I would think the rare instance of needing a life-saving operation that resulted in an unborn death could be something that would automatically trigger that... it would likely then review the case and make a judgment call as to whether the life was really in danger, most likely giving a bit of benefit of the doubt to the doctor and if it's deemed that he acted rashly you would have some slap on the wrist sanction to help correct the practices in the future, but if it's deemed that he's recklessly just handing out abortions without a good reason then the sanctions would need to be severe and possible criminal prosecution could ensue... that would be the system I would envision. of course in my ideal situation direct abortion would never be permissible, it would have to be an indirect procedure that resulted in it; in idealist arguments this often seems like splitting hairs, but in the practical world where ethics boards would review such things, the requirement of an indirect procedure might actually be helpful in regulating the practice against unnecessary abortions.

I imagine one of the Catholic health organizations in the US has such standards, I can't imagine they don't exist in Ireland, actually, in the US I'm remembering the case of the Catholic hospital that was stripped of its Catholic status by the bishop for a direct abortion and the whole issue of the nun-administrator who had supported it, I believe they operated within the parameters of some sort of Catholic ethics standards and such, and where they erred was in doing the direct abortion rather than an indirect procedure.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Aloysius

[Aloysius]

if such a situation does not exist in Ireland, then that is the answer to the OP question, there should be guidelines established and an automatic ethics board triggered any time they need to be used (again, it actually doesn't seem like this even applies to this particular case of course). analyzing it after the fact ensures that the doctors can act quickly to try to save lives in the best way possible according to their medical expertise, and the analysis after the fact would continue to shape practical guidelines so doctors know how to best act in similar situations in the future.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Aloysius