Protection of life bill

EDITORIAL

THE issue of abortion has been the subject of five divisive referenda over the past 30 years. For a long time, the Irish solution to an Irish problem was to take the boat to England but travelling abroad for an abortion also became the subject of one referendum.

 

Typical of the Irish electorate, some amendments to the Constitution on the issue were adopted, while other proposals were rejected. Irish women still have abortions and will continue to have abortions; that’s a given.

After a lull of a couple of years, abortion is once again headline news in this country with the unveiling of The Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill.

It comes against a background of considerable debate among politicians, the medical profession, legal experts, religious leaders and interest group representatives, as well as your ordinary man or woman on the street, concerning the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar at University Hospital Galway last October. Her husband, Praveen, claimed she might have survived if she had been given an abortion, as she had requested.
Details of the Savita Halappanavar case upped the ante in respect of doing something to unravel some of the complexities surrounding when and in what circumstances an abortion could be carried out, with particular reference to a “real and substantial threat to the life of the mother, including the threat of suicide”.

Ms Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant when she presented at the hospital suffering from back pain and as her condition deteriorated over a number of days, she was denied requests for a termination. When the foetal heartbeat stopped, she subsequently miscarried and died herself a few days later.

The jury in the recent inquest into her death delivered a verdict of medical misadventure, while the cause of death was septic shock and E coli. The jury endorsed nine recommendations made by the coroner, Dr Ciarán MacLoughlin, who said “the verdict does not imply individual failings in systems at the hospital contributed to Savita’s death”.

The Government saw this case as a reason to hasten changes that would ensure there could not be a repeat of what happened to Savita Halappanavar in any hospital in this country.

Taking the legislative route, the Government, despite some backbench rumblings, this week published the heads of bill for the The Protection of Life in Pregnancy Bill.

After consideration by the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children, a bill will be drafted and presented by the Government to the Dáil before the summer recess.

There is no question but that the bill will be passed. The Opposition is well outnumbered and opponents among the Government parties will most likely abstain on any vote, rather than cross the floor. TDs and senators, party members and independents alike can expect to take a lot of flack, no matter how they vote. Already Government TDs are lining up to emphasise the benefits of the bill, while the Opposition are picking holes in it.

On Wednesday, Taoiseach Enda Kenny insisted new legislation would not change Ireland’s law on abortion and also stressed that the right to life of the unborn would be upheld.

The new bill will be strictly within the parameters of the Constitution and Supreme Court Judgement in the X Case, will cover existing constitutional rights only and will not create any new rights.

“Our aim is to protect the lives of women and their unborn babies by clarifying the circumstances in which doctors can intervene where a woman’s life is at risk,” he said.

This pretty straightforward statement reaches to the core of the issue. The formula by which the risk to the life of a mother seeking a termination of pregnancy is assessed is something that highly qualified doctors disagree upon, as evidenced by media discussions.

The bill is to set out procedures by which assessments will be made but each case is different and no matter if a woman is to meet a single doctor or a team, no absolute guarantee can be given in respect of a decision.

Termination of pregnancy can only be legally permitted in situations where the doctors have unanimously certified that it is the only treatment that will save the woman’s life. Also, because of the subjective nature of the assessment of suicide risk, the legislation will provide for a demonstrably more rigorous process of assessment in such cases.

Some organisations have identified confusing and conflicting scenarios for women where there isn’t agreement among a panel of doctors. The prospect of a woman going elsewhere for an abortion is obviously something that needs to be addressed, it has been suggested.  One cannot state with certainly that if a suicidal woman is declined an abortion that she might not go ahead and take her own life.

Only cold statistics in the coming years can point to the number of women certified by doctors to have abortions as a life-saving measure.

The tragic death of Savita Halappanavar and the wider abortion debate has brought a renewed consciousness of how it can impact in so many ways, not only on the lives of the women directly involved but also their families.