Woman denied abortion dies in Galway.

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The death of a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant is the subject of two investigations at University Hospital Galway in the Republic of Ireland.
Savita Halappanavar's family said she asked several times for her pregnancy to be terminated because she had severe back pain and was miscarrying. Her family claimed it was refused because there was a foetal heartbeat. She died on 28 October. An autopsy carried out two days later found she had died from septicaemia. Ms Halappanavar, who was 31, was a dentist. Her husband, Praveen, told the Irish Times that medical staff said his wife could not have an abortion because Ireland was a Catholic country and the foetus was still alive.

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She was apparently denied an abortion even though the doctors had already told her the foetus would not survive.

What's even more confusing is how the doctors couldn't come to the diagnosis that the situation represented a real risk to the life of the mother.

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Originally Posted by osarusan

What's even more confusing is how the doctors couldn't come to the diagnosis that the situation represented a real risk to the life of the mother.

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I don't think thats the case. There's no legislation allowing the doctors to perform a termination even in the event of the mother's life being at risk. Doctors may have wanted to operate but felt they weren't allowed.

Thats the whole problem.

Awful case.

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Originally Posted by Dodge

I don't think thats the case. There's no legislation allowing the doctors to perform a termination even in the event of the mother's life being at risk. Doctors may have wanted to operate but felt they weren't allowed.

Thats the whole problem.

Awful case.

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Exactly, doctors can perform an abortion if the mother's life is at risk but there are no guidelines under which they can operate so they end up being paralysed by indecision and the need to cover their asses. Like the failure to legislate for the X Case, it's just another instance of the horrific abdication of responsibility by successive governments in this country.

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Originally Posted by Charlie Darwin

Exactly, doctors can perform an abortion if the mother's life is at risk

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To be clear, they still can't perform an abortion under any circumstance. The Supreme Court found that this is unconstitutional but no legislation has ever been introduced so its still illegal (if not unconstitutional)

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Originally Posted by Dodge

To be clear, they still can't perform an abortion under any circumstance. The Supreme Court found that this is unconstitutional but no legislation has ever been introduced so its still illegal (if not unconstitutional)

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Well it's not legislated for but it's theoretically legal. As in, if the AG decided to prosecute it would be ruled unconstitutional.

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Originally Posted by Dodge

To be clear, they still can't perform an abortion under any circumstance. The Supreme Court found that this is unconstitutional but no legislation has ever been introduced so its still illegal (if not unconstitutional)

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Just been told by a solicitor mate (in normal conversation, not like I wa slooking for legal advice on posts here...) that I was way off. Once the supreme court deemed it unconstitutional the law is effectively repealed.

The point about lack of legislation still stands

But is it not ultimately a medical judgement (and not a legal one) as to when the woman's life is at risk?

I assume - and I'm not a legal guy - that the point is that the law is considering the right of the unborn child as well as the mother. So to terminate the pregnancy would be murder in the law's eyes. You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

Is it normal for things found unconstitutional to remain unlegislated?

And it does seem to bring us back to osarusan's initial question as to how it wasn't determined that there was a threat to the mother's life.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

Is it normal for things found unconstitutional to remain unlegislated?

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Well part 1 of the 1992 referendum attempted to over turn the Supreme Court's ruling in the X case and was rejected. So they did attempt to legislate, but against the wishes of the people. They haven't attempted anything since (shamfully)

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And it does seem to bring us back to osarusan's initial question as to how it wasn't determined that there was a threat to the mother's life.

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I'm not sure thats the issue. it seems the presence of a foetal heartbeat is what stopped the doctor acting (from reports etc etc) not whether her life was at risk

So the doctors acted on the basis that the operation was simply illegal while the foetus had any bit of life - which technically it is - even though the law has been ruled unconstitutional in the event of a threat to the mother's life, even if that's never been proven to be the legal position in a court of law?

And so if a law had been drafted at the time of the referendum saying that abortion was legal only in the case of a threat to the mother's life, this would never have happened?

There's no doubt that if clear legislation existed, there'd be less hesitation in this Doctor's action.

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Minister for Health Dr James Reilly said it would be an extremely serious matter if there had been any hesitation in relation to Ms Halappanavar because of moral or religious beliefs. However, he said he had no evidence of the application of a Catholic bias in relation to treatment and he warned against prejudging the circumstances surrounding the death.

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http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...326607277.html

Spontaneous protests in Dublin and Cork yesterday. I know there's one planned for Limerick at the weekend. A little concerned that we're not far off one of them turning messy as a planned one is more likely to attract a counter demonstration and emotions, normally high on this issue anyway, are pretty much white hot.

Somewhat cross-posting with a respectful nod to my 'The Gathering' thread here's an excellent use for those postcards we've all been getting lately. Either side can use them of course. https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.n...88798288_n.jpg

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Originally Posted by Dodge

To be clear, they still can't perform an abortion under any circumstance.

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For what it's worth, Medical Council guidelines (pdf link) state that -

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Abortion is illegal in Ireland except where there is a real and substantial risk to the life (as distinct from the health) of the mother

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So I don't think it's necessarily correct to say they can't perform an abortion under any circumstance. The linked document is quite clear as to when you can and can't perform an abortion. At an individual level anyway, I'd say Medical Council guidelines would cover you personally in court, and conversely, the doctor may now have to answer as to why he didn't follow Medical Council guidelines.

I don't know the legal status of the guidelines, but I'd be fairly sure that a doctor would at least have a better understanding of that issue than me.

On that basis, a lot of the arguments about how Ireland is such a backward country that stuff like this could happen isn't actually true at all. This seems simply to be a bad medical call.

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Originally Posted by pineapple stu

So I don't think it's necessarily correct to say they can't perform an abortion under any circumstance.

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I clarified that in the next post

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On that basis, a lot of the arguments about how Ireland is such a backward country that stuff like this could happen isn't actually true at all. This seems simply to be a bad medical call.

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Not really. its still 20 years since the X case and there's been no legislation to clarify thigns. mainly due to church influence in the view of most.

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Originally Posted by Dodge

I clarified that in the next post

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You did, yeah, sorry. Just wanted to post the exact guidelines (whatever that word means) to help clarify (if that's the word...) the position though.

When it comes to this case, the constitution

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The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother,

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has a clear expressed authority.
The diagnosis was already made regards the child, the child would not survive. The mother's life was in danger and her condition was deteriorating.
The symptoms that she was experiencing made it plain that her life was in danger.
If the baby had a chance of life, then no doubt that danger to the mother would have to measured more accurately, possibly to the nth degree considering the grey area of abortion/threat to mother's life.
In this case the baby had no chance of life, the medics only had to acknowledge the woman's symptoms, that her life was in danger, she was not responding to current treatment and her condition was worsening.
No one can say with certainty that she would have survived the sepsis condition had the abortion been performed but it would have been regarded as medically the best practice to do.
It has all the appearance of an appalling example of medical mistreatment.

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Originally Posted by geysir

The diagnosis was already made regards the child, the child would not survive.

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Is that of legal relevance so long as a heartbeat is still evident in the foetus? There's been a suggestion, and I'm not sure of its accuracy with regard to Irish law, that to have performed an abortion would have amounted to a criminal act because the foetus was still alive even if its fate had already been established by the doctors. Can that be correct? That would seemingly constitute an absolute ban on abortion, unless where the mother might have already miscarried, but that would make any provision for induced abortion kind of pointless, surely?

Similarly, just because a being's fate might be known or predictable to a reasonable degree of certainty outside of the womb - that he or she may die, say, tomorrow - doesn't permit the performance of euthanasia. That would still amount to murder under the law. Once again, I'm not sure how relevant that is exactly but, from what I've been reading/hearing, the right to life of a foetus appears to be equated to the right to life of the mother/beings living outside of the womb under Irish law.

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Originally Posted by DannyInvincible

Is that of legal relevance so long as a heartbeat is still evident in the foetus? There's been a suggestion, and I'm not sure of its accuracy with regard to Irish law, that to have performed an abortion would have amounted to a criminal act because the foetus was still alive even if its fate had already been established by the doctors. Can that be correct? That would seemingly constitute an absolute ban on abortion, unless where the mother might have already miscarried, but that would make any provision for induced abortion kind of pointless, surely?

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Surely not.
You do realize that a woman has a (conditional) right to an abortion under the constitution?
It has already been accepted by the Supreme Court that ' a woman had a right to an abortion under Article 40.3.3 if there was "a real and substantial risk" to her life. This right did not exist if there was a risk to her health but not her life; however it did exist if the risk was the possibility of suicide.
That ruling was made in a case where the unborn child was presumably healthy or the health of the unborn child was not an an issue.
The real and substantial risk to that woman's life was determined by a diagnosis/prognosis.
Medical diagnosis is accepted as valid evidence for acceptance by the Supreme Court.

If one only evaluated the risk to the woman's life in this current case, at the very least there was risk to her life, I can't quantify how real and substantial it was. Medical best practice tells you that according to the symptoms, lack of response to treatment and deteriorating condition, the risk was real and substantial. Aborting the unborn child is the medical procedure to do in that case.
And of relevance to the constitution is the important detail, that there was a medical diagnosis that the unborn child would not survive.

Indeed, I'm aware of the 'X' Case, and its findings do conflict with the proposition I've put forward, so why has it been argued that the presence of a heartbeat in the foetus might have posed legal complications?

Are you implying Irish law on the matter should have been sufficient as it is then to protect the life of the mother in the case at hand? That the death of Savita Halappanavar was most likely as a result of medical negligence rather than due to a lacking or uncertain legal framework to cover the situation? Writing in hindsight, it's quite obvious that the pregnancy posed a "real and substantial risk" to the mother's life; whether that was discernible prior to her death appears to be the crux of the issue in this case then.