Tag: abortion

More half-truth deceit?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters3 Comments

https://i0.wp.com/i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/20/tom.halftrue.jpg

Ireland’s maternal mortality rate is twice as high as has been previously reported, new figures show.

Does this not give the impression that previously reported figures failed to report what they should have reported?

Irish Health.com tells us this on its Newsletter and does so with a very clear agenda – to promote the rush to abortion legislation in Ireland on the back of Savita Halappanavar’s death. But that story, as any honest reader knows, is not as simple as Irish Health.com’s editor, Niall Hunter, pretends. In a posted response to a reader who complained about his story, Hunter shows clearly where he is coming from – and where he wants to take us.

Rarely, he says, has a single health story so captivated the country as the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar. Having dodged the issue for 20 years, now the Dáil must act to legislate so that no more women should have to suffer as Savita did…

Neither are the statistics he uses in his story as straightforward as he, with sleight of hand, suggests they are.

He bases his story on the first report from the recently-established Maternal Death Enquiry – MDE – Ireland. That report, he says, shows that our maternal death rate is 8 per 100,000 births, compared with 4 per 100,000 reported by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

A truthful presentation of this information would have said that on one set of criteria, statistics show what the CSO tells us; on a different set of criteria we get the MDE figure. Take your pick and argue the case for your chosen criteria – but do not say bluntly that the figure in question is twice as high as has been previously reported. That is – at best – a half-truth. At worst it is a deliberate attempt to deceive and mislead.

The MDE Ireland report, he tells us, which uses wider criteria for defining maternal death than that used by the CSO, found that in the years 2009 to 2011 inclusive, 25 mothers who attended maternity hospitals with their pregnancies died. Am I being over-suspicious in thinking that he is slipping this clause in under the radar: which uses wider criteria for defining maternal death than that used by the CSO? Given his agenda, I don’t think so.

The Irish report, he explains, adopted the more comprehensive British classification system for determining maternal death, and collated detailed data on mortality from hospitals. It classified two of the deaths in the period as being due to suicide. We are not told anything about those suicides or whether or not they were related directly to the pregnancies. This suggests more programming in favour of the forthcoming debate in which some will be trying to include threats of suicide as a pretext for signing off for abortions. “More comprehensive”.  Does that always mean more accurate and informative?

We live in dangerous times when agencies claiming the respectability which Irish Health.com claims peddle this kind of propaganda.

Lies, damn lies and politically correct ideology

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment
Children at the mercy of ideology

The Irish people  voted recently in a referendum and gave the Irish state increased powers over families in that jurisdiction. The vote was closer than expected and one of the reasons surely was that a great number of people had concerns about how much trust could be placed in the judgement and competence of the state’s child-care agencies. They did not know then what was going to be revealed about these agencies when they get caught up in the kind of  ideology which has gripped Rotherham Council in the neighbouring jurisdiction of Great Britain. Had they done so the vote might have swung the other way.

The Rotherham story, in a nutshell, is this: Three small children are removed from their foster home because the couple taking excellent care of them hold political views that social workers say make them unable to meet the youngsters’ “cultural and ethnic needs”. The children, we are told by  council, are now “safe and well, unaware of what’s happening around them”.

Allison Pearson in today’s Daily Telegraph doesn’t put a tooth in it. “That’s a lie” she says. “A comforting, callous, official lie. To remove a baby and her brother and sister from their biological parents is awful, but in dire circumstances it is the lesser evil. To settle the children in a foster home is hard, but possible, particularly when the foster mum is a nursery nurse in her fifties with years of experience. But to snatch them from that loving home a mere eight weeks later is so cruel, so stupid and so damaging that the people who made that decision should be removed from their jobs with the same haste that the infants were taken from their carers.”

This kind of ideology is viral and it is riddled with the kind of deception which Pearson points her finger at in Rotherham. The Irish people would be very naive to think that they are in some way immune from infection by this ideology or these lies. A look at the deceptions pouring out from the pro-abortion activists and their shameful abuse of the memory of Savita Halappanavar in their campaign to bring abortion on demand into the country shows only too clearly how deep the infection has already penetrated. They may live to regret the weakening of the institution of the family which they have just now conceded to. They are about to review their Constitution and for this infected element in the body politic this is going to be a further opportunity to try to bring their country on a short road to social and moral ruin.

Voices crying in the wilderness of misinformation

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

In view of the continuing and unrelenting barrage of international media misinformation surrounding the sad death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland – which the whole world must now know about – this view in Canada’s National Post, along with a useful post on a blog elsewhere, deserves further circulation.

The National Post comment is from Stephanie Gray, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform  and author of A Physician’s Guide to Discussing Abortion. It covers some of the same ground – but in more detail – covered on November 23, 2012 by J.C. von Krempach, J.D in his Turtle Bay and Beyond blog.

Von Krempach observes how the world-wide pro-abortion warriors jumped on a story that may very well now crash around their ears – if there were any honest campers left in the world’s media organisations.

For the international abortion lo
bby, the whole story was just too convenient to be true: at the very moment when the Irish government is discussing controversial plans to liberalize abortion, a pregnant woman dies in an Irish hospital because she was denied an abortion that would have saved her life.

But what are the facts?

It now appears that the young woman did not die of a complication related to pregnancy. Her autopsy has revealed that she died of blood poisoning and E. coli ESBL, an antibiotic-resistant strain of the bacterium. E. coli ESBL has recently spread throughout the U.K., causing urinary tract infections which can develop into blood poisoning.

Once again, the abortion lobby has erected a monument to its own disingenuity, he comments.

Stephanie Gray in the National Post points out that the tragic deaths of Savita and her pre-born daughter Prasa  really make no case for legal abortion. She says that those across the world who say it does are overlooking an important piece of information recently reported in The Irish Times and The Guardian: an autopsy revealed that Halappanavar died of septicaemia “documented ante-mortem” and E.coli ESBL.

Countless news reports are only talking about the septicaemia (i.e., blood poisoning), but few are discussing E.coli ESBL, which, incidentally enough, can lead to, you guessed it, septicaemia. Just what is E. coli ESBL? An antibiotic-resistant bacteria (not to be confused with regular strains of E. coli that cause food poisoning) that is associated with urinary tract infections (UTI). This strain of E. coli has been spreading in the UK  and last year two babies died in nearby Wales because of it. The presence of E. coli ESBL is particularly problematic if Halappanavar was given antibiotics to fight an infection that was resistant to those very antibiotics.

According to the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, E. coli is one of the most common organisms to cause a UTI and complicated UTIs are frequently associated with pregnancy. They write, “The likelihood of treatment failure and serious complications, particularly the development of antimicrobial resistance, is more common in CUTI [complicated urinary tract infection].”

So instead of jumping to the conclusions that Halappanavar needed an abortion and that Ireland needs to legalize the killing of the youngest of its kind, the reasonable approach would be to get to the bottom of what Halappanavar’s condition was and examine how it was, or was not, responded to. We have yet to hear from the hospital and the medical professionals involved as to what precisely happened, but with this report of her dying from E. coli ESBL one wonders how killing Halappanavar’s baby Prasa would have killed the E. coli.

Is it possible that E. coli ESBL ascended her vagina and entered her uterus via the dilated cervix? Yes, that’s possible. But it’s also possible that her cervix dilated (thus initiating a miscarriage) because E. coli ESBL ascended her urinary tract and caused an infection in her kidneys, which can lead to uterine contractions, and if not treated, to cervical change.

So the infection could have been elsewhere in her body besides the uterus. Even if it was in the latter (a condition known as chorioamnionitis) then it is an ethical course of action to induce labour to eliminate this pathological and lethal condition (the presence of infected membranes) from her uterus. But that act itself wouldn’t have eliminated the E. coli ESBL if it actually originated in the urinary tract, which, if resistant to interventions like antibiotics, could have lead to the septicaemia.

And yet, The Toronto Star would have you believe “There’s a very simple reason why Savita died. It’s because she wasn’t listened to.” On the contrary, much more needs to be known about how she died. But what we do know is that jumping to the conclusion that abortion should be legalized in Ireland overlooks the underlying medical condition and makes the dangerous assumption that we need to kill one person to save another.

A frightening flight from truth and reason

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

In this morning’s array of reports and comments on the ongoing controversey about the sad death of Savita Halappanavar only one voice seemed to be crying out with any degree of sanity in the wilderness of misinformation spreading around the globe on the matter. That was Tim Stanley’s in his Daily Telegraph blog. Sitting on the fence on the question of abortion he wrote:

This post is neither for nor against legalised abortion – it’s simply about laying out the facts of a very tragic story.

On October 21, Savita Halappanavar visited Galway University Hospital, Ireland.  The 31-year-old dentist was 17 weeks pregnant and suffering terrible back pain. Savita was told that she was having a miscarriage, so she requested an abortion. The doctors denied her request because they said that they detected a foetal heartbeat and that Irish law ruled out a termination. Savita’s pain continued for three days and she eventually died of septicaemia.

Inevitably, this awful story has prompted demands for a rethink of Ireland’s abortion laws. That’s understandable and will almost certainly happen. Ireland has been liberalising for decades; Irishness and Catholic conservatism are no longer as synonymous as they once were. The European Court of Human Rights 2010 ruling on abortion gives Taoiseach Enda Kenny good legal grounds for a review of the law, and Kenny has branded himself as a critic of the privileged status of Catholicism in Ireland. Change will probably come.

But some would dispute whether or not Savita’s death is an appropriate catalyst for that change. In Ireland, it actually is legal to induce a birth when a mother’s life is at risk. Eilís Mulroy notes the following:

The decision to induce labour early would be fully in compliance with the law and the current guidelines set out for doctors by the Irish Medical Council. Those guidelines allow interventions to treat women where necessary, even if that treatment indirectly results in the death to the baby. If they aren’t being followed, laws about abortion won’t change that. The issue then becomes about medical protocols being followed in hospitals and not about the absence of legal abortion in Ireland.

Because Savita’s case is under investigation, Mulroy asks questions but, wisely, avoids inferring answers: why, in this instance, did the hospital not induce (as it could and should) and is its decision not to induce reflective of a wider institutional failure?

It is possible that new legislation is necessary to clarify the existing medical consensus. But it does not logically follow that Ireland needs a total rethink of its entire approach to abortion that brings it in line with Europe’s essentially pro-choice culture. Aside from the specific medical case for abortion in Savita’s situation, inducing labour to save her life would not necessarily have conflicted with Catholic moral teaching, either. In 1951, Pope Pius XII explicitly ruled that such a procedure “can be lawful.” If it is true, as the Halappanavar family claims, that the Galway doctors said they would not provide a termination because “this is a Catholic country”, then they got their theology unforgivably wrong.

Savita Halappanavar’s death demands investigation and answers. Aside from giving justice to her family, the implications of any investigation for the wider abortion debate are so wide-ranging that it is crucial that we get the facts unbiased and 100 per cent accurate. Alas, such objectivity is not always applied when it comes to media reporting of the Irish and/or Catholic approach to abortion. Indeed, much of it is misleading and unhelpful.

What is frightening about all this is the flight from reason and truth. Many of the facts surrounding the case are not at all clear but one is clear and that is that this is not about abortion at all. It is about medical practice in a particular Irish hospital and whether or not the medical team involved in this case did everything they could do to save this woman’s life which they were obliged to do by law and the ethics of their profession. Is no one interested in the truth anymore – either in Ireland and across the globe?

All treatment necessary to save her life should have been given

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

Following the tragic news today about the recent death of  Savida Halappanavar, a native of India living with her husband here in Ireland, the media agency Catholic Comment, issued a statement clarifying that nothing in Catholic teaching on abortion stood in the way of giving Savida all and every treatment necessary to save her life. The statement said:

  The death of Savida Halappanavar is a tragic loss and our sympathy goes to her husband and family. While we don’t know the full facts of the cause of death, it is clear that under current medical practice in Ireland, she should not have been denied treatment necessary to save her life.  This is in line with ethical standards, including from a Catholic perspective. She should not have been told she could not receive necessary medical treatment because “this is a Catholic country.”

In 2000, Professor John Bonnar, then chairman of Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which represents 90%-95% of Ireland’s obstetricians and gynaecologists, explained the situation to the All Party Oireachtas Committee’s Fifth Report on Abortion as follows:

‘In current obstetrical practice rare complications can arise where therapeutic intervention is required at a stage in pregnancy when there will be little or no prospect for the survival of the baby, due to extreme immaturity. In these exceptional situations failure to intervene may result in the death of both the mother and baby. We consider that there is a fundamental difference between abortion carried out with the intention of taking the life of the baby, for example for social reasons, and the unavoidable death of the baby resulting from essential treatment to protect the life of the mother.’

 In other words, for the hospital to have induced labour with the intention of saving Savita would have been in accord both with Irish law, normal Irish medical practice, and with Catholic teaching. In a recent article in the Irish Times, Bishop John Fleming stated that “…if the life of the mother is threatened, by illness or some other medical condition, the care provided by medical professionals will make sure that she receives all the medical care needed.”

We hope that the investigations being carrying out will show if and why this did not happen in this case.

Petra Conroy is Catholic Comment’s coordinator and can be contacted here . Full details about Catholic Comment are here.

So what is the real agenda?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

After all this will they still be proclaiming themselves as the guardians of women’s health?

In today’ s Irish Independent,  Gemma O’Doherty reports a shocking story which puts this big question-mark over the self-advertising of the Irish Family Planning Association, an affiliate of International Planned Parenthood Federation.

A “Shocking breach of good medical practice” is how the Master of one of the country’s major maternity hospitals describes the abortion advice given at IFPA centres throughout the country which could put lives at risk. O’Doherty’s report follows.

STAFF at some taxpayer-funded pregnancy counselling services are putting women’s lives at risk and breaking the law, an undercover probe has revealed.

The investigation was carried out over several months by a team of women, some from the pro-life movement, who secretly recorded counsellors at 11 locations around the country.

Some of the advice they gave about abortion was illegal, according to a leading lawyer, and some was medically dangerous, a top doctor says.

In several instances, women were told to hide their abortions from their doctors, a course of action that could endanger life if post-surgery abortion complications remain undiagnosed.

A small percentage of women suffer perforation of the womb following terminations, which can remain undetected but can cause problems in later pregnancies.

The Irish Independent has viewed and listened to the investigation tapes.

Following a five-hour examination of the material, the HSE has launched an investigation.

A spokesperson said that any potential breaches of the legislation will be pursued.

Gardai at Dublin’s Store Street station are also looking into the findings of the probe.

At the Dundalk office of the Irish Family Planning Association (IFPA), a client was told she could lie to her doctor about having had an abortion, advice that could put a woman’s life at risk, Professor Sam Coulter Smith, the master of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, has warned.

He said he was aware of cases where women have died because they did not tell their doctors they’d had a termination.

At two Dublin branches of the IFPA in Tallaght and Cathal Brugha Street, women were also told they could conceal their abortions from doctors.

The same advice was given by a HSE employee at Ballinasloe Crisis Pregnancy Support Service in Galway.

In response, Dr Simon Mills, a barrister and medical doctor, said: “It is definitely reckless and probably negligent advice to tell a woman to conceal from doctors something that may be a vital part of her medical history.

“This is especially the case if she presented unwell in the immediate aftermath of a termination and felt that she shouldn’t tell her doctor about it when it could be the key piece of information to deliver prompt and life-saving treatment.

“If somebody turned around and said the reason I didn’t tell my doctor was because a counsellor told me it wasn’t necessary, civil liability would almost certainly arise and I think it is possible that criminal liability could too.”

The revelations come a week after the first private abortion clinic on the island of Ireland opened its doors in Belfast.

The investigation was carried out by a group of women posing as pregnant clients. The research team, made up of 30 people, included teachers, lawyers and doctors. Some of them come from the pro-life movement.

They instigated the probe after receiving information that some pregnancy advice centres may be breaking the law.

The clinics involved are overseen and funded by the HSE’s Crisis Pregnancy Programme (CPP).

This state body was set up to cut the number of unplanned pregnancies and the number of Irish women travelling for abortions by making the other two options of parenting and adoption more ‘attractive’.

At the Tallaght and Cork branches of the IFPA, women were told how to get an abortion pill, which is illegal here, by smuggling it into the State through Northern Ireland.

The HSE has confirmed that crisis pregnancy counsellors should not provide information on how to get the abortion pill.

The pills induce an abortion by causing a miscarriage. They should only be taken under medical supervision because they can cause bleeding, severe infection or, in rare instances, death.

A leading constitutional lawyer, Paul Anthony McDermott, has said that telling somebody how to access and take an illegal drug could be seen as “aiding and abetting a crime”.

Some of the results of the undercover recording show:

– At Dundalk IFPA, a woman was told: “Now when you go for medical attention they have no way of knowing that you have had an abortion. You need to say that you had a miscarriage. They will know you were pregnant but you need to say that you had a miscarriage.”

– A counsellor at Tallaght IFPA told a woman how to import the abortion pill illegally. She said: “If you have an address in the North or you can buy a PO box number, and get them to send it . . . You can. . . then go and collect the tablets in the North and take them down here.”

– At the Sexual Health Centre in Cork, another woman was told how to get an abortion pill. Her counsellor said: “I suppose I’m not encouraging you to break the law or get into trouble . . . but it can be done.”

She also admitted that giving this sort of advice could get her arrested.

According to the HSE’s CPP, information given by counselling services about abortion must be truthful, objective and must not involve the ‘promotion or advocacy’ of it.

Last year, more than €3.1m of public money was spent on crisis pregnancy services overseen by the HSE.

A spokeswoman for the organisation said the CPP would “agree whatever measures necessary with these agencies to ensure that the highest possible standard in crisis pregnancy counselling is provided within the existing legal framework”.

In a statement, the IFPA said that “all of its counsellors set out to work in adherence with the law” and that its services operate “under protocols and procedures which take into account all legislative requirements”.

An offer to review the audio and video evidence from the probe was declined by the organisation.

It was furnished with the transcripts of the investigation by the Irish Independent three weeks ago.

Eilis Mulroy, a Galway-based solicitor who was part of the research team and is a member of the pro-life movement, said: “We had heard that questionable practices were going on.

“The 1995 Abortion Information Act is very clear when it comes to the obligations of counsellors and the information they are allowed to give.

“But our investigation found that this legislation is being breached on a wide scale and that Irish women in crisis pregnancies are getting dangerous medical advice.

“This reflects a high level of contempt for their health and well-being, not to mention the law.”

Last night, the Irish Medicines Board expressed “grave concern and disappointment” that healthcare professionals would give advice on how to source illegal medicines.

A spokesperson said: “This contradicts our consistent warnings against such practices. We would additionally be concerned in relation to abortifacients in that self-medication is not appropriate for such products.”

The most recent statistics show that 4,149 Irish women had terminations in Britain in 2011.

The revelations come as an expert group set up by Health Minister James Reilly prepares to publish a report on whether abortion should be legalised in Ireland under limited circumstances.

– Gemma O’Doherty

Regrettably, the end of the line

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

Perhaps a day will come when this decision can be reversed. Today, with a heavy heart, I sent this to the subscriptions department of The Irish Times.

Regrettably, because of what seems to me to be an inbuilt editorial bias towards the so-called pro-choice side in the ongoing debate on abortion I wish to cancel my subscription for morning delivery of the Irish Times. I say “so-called” because we are all, hopefully, pro-choice. What we should be judged on is the justice of the choices we make. 

I have no wish to provide funding for what appears to be an extension of a campaign to introduce abortion legislation to Ireland.  I am not referring to the free expression of opinion on the issue, either by columnists or leader writers  My concern is about a bias I find in the treatment of news stories.
One small example is the burying of Patsy McGarry’s minimal news coverage of the Irish Bishops’  pastoral initiative at the bottom right hand corner of page 6 yesterday (cf some observations on this in a post on http://www.garvan.wordpress.com). 
Another example would be your sub-editorial treatment – the report itself was fair enough – of the medical conference on maternal health a few weeks ago. This spoke volumes to me about your lack of openness to any positive pro-life stories in the news. Had that conference produced a story which would have served the cause of introducing abortion legislation here I have very little doubt but that it would have got a much more explicit headline and an much better space than the far-left column of a right hand page. I cannot judge about what is happening on the letters page but I have anecdotal evidence that many people on the pro-life side do send letters which never see the light of day.
My observation to you would be that while your by-lined reporters try to be reasonably objective, your anonymous sub-editors are playing a different game.
 
Yours sincerely
 

Michael Kirke.

Is the “paper of record” troubling consciences?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

Well what do you know? The “paper of record” has done it again. If you wanted some detailed news about what the leaders of the Catholic Church in Ireland is offering to its followers this weekend by way of information and encouragement to take a stand consistent with the belief and moral teachings of the institution they have freely chosen to follow, which paper would you go to? Not the paper of record.

Below are the three reports from Saturday morning’s Irish broadsheets. The Irish independent gives us nearly 400 words in its comprehensive summary of what the Irish bishops have issued to the parishes throughout the county. The Irish Examiner gives us over 200 and a good report. The Irish Times, however, gives us just over 150 words from its renowned even-handed religious affairs correspondent and buries the story at the bottom right hand corner of page six, probably one of the most “invisible” news slots in any newspaper.

Wonderful – and this after last week’s numbers debacle where the Times reported – apparently under “tweeting” pressure from the pro-abortion people –  that “several” thousand protesters thronged the ranks of a pro-choice street demonstration in Dublin last weekend when in fact a serious count using the video images from the demo showed that the number did not even reach one thousand.

Combine this observation with everything else we have been reading in the Irish Times in the past few months pertaining to the abortion issue and it is very hard not to conclude that here we have a paper which has deliberately set it face in the direction of the Mecca of introducing abortion legislation into Ireland.

What choice has a conscientious person who considers that such legislation, if put on the statute books of this country, would lead to the wholesale taking of the innocent lives of babies awaiting delivery from their mothers’ wombs? One choice, I think – if they are paying subscribers to that paper.  Cancel their subscription because it looks very much like a financial subscription to a cause supporting that wholesale slaughter.

Irish independent

Church launches new anti-abortion campaign

By Luke Byrne, Saturday October 06 2012

The Catholic Church will tomorrow begin a public campaign to oppose access to abortion in Ireland under any circumstances.

A pastoral message is to be read out at Mass opposing abortion and earlier this week all 1,360 parishes north and south of the Border were sent material on the church’s opposition to abortion, including homily notes, prayers, and posters.

The move is being seen as the opening salvo in the church’s campaign to lobby against access to abortion here.

It follows a promise by Cardinal Sean Brady in August that priests would be provided with the resources to campaign on the issue.

The homily notes have suggested that tomorrow’s first Bible reading come from the creation account of life from Genesis. “This provides an ideal context in which to speak of the beauty and sanctity of human life as part of the gift of God’s creation,” it said.

A prayer card has also been provided for parishioners. Along with a prayer, the card will say: “As science makes clear it is at fertilisation that a new, unique and genetically complete human being comes into existence.”

Responding to the planned campaign, Senator Ivana Bacik said she believed that the church’s moral power had been “significantly weakened” by the sexual abuse scandals.

“I think it’s disheartening that the church still thinks it can dictate to women regarding sexual health matters,” she said.

“I think the church should get its own house in order,” she added.

The church has also called for a month of prayer dedicated to the theme of ‘Choose Life’ to begin tomorrow, which it has called ‘Day for Life Sunday’.

The literature has told priests that it is not necessary for the Government to legislate for legal abortion in Ireland following the 2010 European Court of Human Rights case against the State.

Instead, it said that the Government “could choose to protect the life of the unborn baby in the womb” by changing the Constitution to set aside the Supreme Court ruling in the ‘X-case’.

As part of the campaign, the bishops’ conference has also commissioned a website at www.chooselife2012.ie

Ms Bacik said that the issues of the ‘X-case’ have twice been put to referendum and both times Ireland supported safe abortion in the case where a mother’s life was at risk.

Irish Examiner

Church to launch pro-life campaign with messages to Mass-goers

By Juno McEnroe, Political Reporter, Saturday, October 06, 2012

The Catholic Church will launch its pro-life campaign this weekend with anti- abortion messages for Mass- goers, posters in churches, and testimonies from women who have experienced crisis pregnancy.

The campaign details, letters, and materials have been sent to 1,360 parishes ahead of the release of the Government’s expert group report on abortion.

Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Seán Brady, recently said the Church would run a campaign against legalising abortion in Ireland.

Cardinal Brady said the State was not obliged to legislate for abortion as a result of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights on the so-called ABC case, which the expert group is addressing.

The “choose life” campaign will run for the next four weeks. Notes sent to priests on homilies read: “Any mother or father who has gazed in wonder at an ultrasound scan of their baby, or heard his or her heart beating for the first time, will know how rapid and beautiful is the development of their baby in the womb.”

Priests are also being advised to tell Mass-goers the Government should introduce laws or a constitutional amendment that would set aside the Supreme Court ruling in the X case, which allowed for abortion in some circumstances.

The Irish Times

Bishops launch anti-abortion month

PATSY McGARRY

Ireland’s Catholic bishops have called on “all who believe in the equal dignity and beauty of every human life” to “join us in calling on our public representatives to respect the humanity and life of children in the womb and to reject abortion.”

The bishops made their appeal in a special pastoral message which will be read and distributed in all Catholic parishes on the island this weekend. It coincides with “Day for Life Sunday” tomorrow, which also marks the start of a month of prayer around the theme “Choose Life!”, announced last month.

Relevant “Choose Life!” material was sent to all 1,360 Catholic parishes in Ireland this week to promote the month of prayer campaign. A special website chooselife2012.iehas been launched with a complementary Choose Life! presence on social media (Choose Life 2012 on Facebook, and @Chooselife2012 on Twitter and on YouTube).

The bishops said their message was for people of all backgrounds and traditions across the island.

Repeat after me: “No medical evidence was offered”

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

This, in The Irish Times, September 24, helps put the record straight in “the paper of record”:

Sir, – Claire Brophy (September 19th) has got her facts wrong regarding the A, B, C v Ireland case.
C did not have cancer when she became pregnant and she most certainly did not have to travel to England for an abortion “so that her cancer could be treated”. C had completed chemotherapy for “a rare form of cancer” when she came pregnant and had sought information from her GP, “as well as several medical consultants” on what treatment options would be available her should her cancer happen to relapse during pregnancy. No medical evidence on the supposed life-threatening nature of a condition she might develop was offered to the court and no information regarding which medical specialties she had allegedly consulted was offered.

There exist specialists within medicine for a reason: it is a subject too extensive for every doctor to know everything. If a patient’s healthcare needs are beyond your capabilities you refer to your specialised colleague for expert input, such as in the case of cancer complicating pregnancy. Did this happen in the case of C? We simply don’t know. Perhaps the IFPA could enlighten us before people criticise Irish healthcare.

What we do know is that we have already heard from specialists who are far more qualified in the area of gynaecological oncology than I or Claire Brophy. Speaking at the International Symposium on Maternal Health in Dublin, Dr Frédéric Amant, who for his groundbreaking research into the safe delivery of chemotherapy during pregnancy was described by Lancet Oncology as “leading the agenda on cancer in pregnancy” concluded that, “in the case of cancer complicating pregnancy, termination of pregnancy does not improve maternal prognosis”. This mirrors the comments of our own home-grown expert in oncology, Dr John Crown, who tweeted earlier this year, “I don’t think I ever had a case where abortion was necessary to save mom”. The experts have spoken.

Finally, there’s no room in this debate for the unsubstantiated claims made by Ms Brophy and by Patricia Lohr (September 13th) that women are travelling to England for “life-saving abortions”. I would invite them to reveal the British department of health statistics, which are available under FOI, any case whereby an Irish woman accessed a “life-saving abortion” in England on account of being refused life-saving treatment in Ireland. – Is mise,

Dr EOGHAN de FAOITE,
O’Connell Avenue, Dublin 7.

Why do they not listen? The amount of misinformation being circulated by those campaigning for abortion and the dishonesty underlying it is truly appalling.