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Pregnant woman dies in UCHG after being refused a termination

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Comments

  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,497 ✭✭✭billybudd


    gozunda wrote: »
    BB - is that your link? Ok I get what you have written below it but not too sure how it fits in with the section you quoted above from me re. how others may perceive Ireland following what happened in Galway.
    Can you explain perhaps?


    Well i think it shows we are able to be proactive in the face of shameful events and we understand and accept that a tragedy like this has no place in modern Ireland and although we became complacent with a legislation that should have had more public interest than it has had we are now going to act.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,496 ✭✭✭Boombastic


    Seems like the gov won't be doing much any time soon

    Too soon to commit on abortion legislation, says Reilly
    Minister for Health James Reilly is resisting pressure to commit to the introduction of legislation to clarify the legal situation governing terminations of pregnancy.

    Dr Reilly said it would be improper of him to make such a commitment before he considered the report of his expert group on abortion.

    :(


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,992 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    billybudd wrote: »


    Do you know what context he used those words in? as magicsean said maybe anger or in defiance? that is a key issue would you not agree?

    The indicator here is that he did not step away from the situation. If he believed his 'hands were tied' as some have suggested then he had this option. If he was 'angry or feeling defiant' then surely he would have provided the woman with the treatment that at least one independent expert opinion has stated is best practice, which is provided for under the constitution and would have given the woman the best chance of recovery. if he believed the catholic ethos was wrong then he in my view would have followed thru by acting on that anger and defiance ignoring whatever possible consequences to ensure that the woman had the best chance of recovery. Looking at this objectively what was said and what was done and not done just does not add up for me.

    You are of course free to make up your mind and your own opinion on this matter.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,090 ✭✭✭jill_valentine


    Boombastic wrote: »
    Seems like the gov won't be doing much any time soon

    Too soon to commit on abortion legislation, says Reilly
    Minister for Health James Reilly is resisting pressure to commit to the introduction of legislation to clarify the legal situation governing terminations of pregnancy.

    I remember hearing bits and pieces of all these conversations I'm hearing now back when I was seven years old, twenty years ago.

    Too soon. :rolleyes: How long do yis need lads?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,497 ✭✭✭billybudd


    gozunda wrote: »
    The indicator here is that he did not step away from the situation. If he believed his 'hands were tied' as some have suggested then he had this option. If he was 'angry or feeling defiant' then surely he would have provided the woman with the treatment that at least one independent expert opinion has stated is best practice, which is provided for under the constitution and would have given the woman the best chance of recovery. if he believed the catholic ethos was wrong then he in my view would have followed thru by acting on that anger and defiance ignoring whatever possible consequences to ensure that the woman had the best chance of recovery. Looking at this objectively what was said and what was done and not done just does not add up for me.

    You are of course free to make up your mind and your own opinion on this matter.

    Maybe or maybe not, hopefully we will know soon what happened and hopefully core issues are clarified and legislated for properly.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,992 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    billybudd wrote: »


    Well i think it shows we are able to be proactive in the face of shameful events and we understand and accept that a tragedy like this has no place in modern Ireland and although we became complacent with a legislation that should have had more public interest than it has had we are now going to act.

    Ok get that but not to sure with what I said below ?
    ]
    Sometimes the true impact of a situation is only properly reflected through some else's view of it

    For those that don't think what happened does not reflect on the country and us as its citizens - take a good long hard look...(US TV report)

    What I am trying to get across here is that this country is often overtly inward looking on many issues and that it will help to take into account others views. on a personal level it can be quite hard to be totally objective on something that people can get so tied up with. I also don't believe we necessarily have the right political momentum atm to tackle something of this complexity. I believe that the government will try and drag their heals on this as they do not wish to divide their electorate power base and are too canny to undertake something so potentially divisive.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,497 ✭✭✭billybudd


    I remember hearing bits and pieces of all these conversations I'm hearing now back when I was seven years old, twenty years ago.

    Too soon. :rolleyes: How long do yis need lads?


    Did he actually use the words ''glanced at it'' shocking.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,497 ✭✭✭billybudd


    gozunda wrote: »
    Ok get that but not to sure with what I said below ?



    What I am trying to get across here is that this country is often overtly inward looking on many issues and that it will help to take into account others views. on a personal level it can be quite hard to be totally objective on something that people can get so tied up with. I also don't believe we necessarily have the right political momentum atm to tackle something of this complexity. I believe that the government will try and drag their heals on this as they do not wish to divide their electorate power base and are too canny to undertake something so potentially divisive.

    It is great to learn from others and to have peers that you can mature with but its important not to take judgement from hypocritical minds.

    If you look at the political infrastructure of Ireland it is based on many socialist ideals where people were put first, in 50's and 60's america looked on Ireland as a communist country because we had free health care and social welfare.

    What i am really saying is that there is no nirvana in any country and we all have problems caused by an out dated mentality.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 18,992 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    billybudd wrote: »

    It is great to learn from others and to have peers that you can mature with but its important not to take judgement from hypocritical minds.

    If you look at the political infrastructure of Ireland it is based on many socialist ideals where people were put first, in 50's and 60's america looked on Ireland as a communist country because we had free health care and social welfare.

    What i am really saying is that there is no nirvana in any country and we all have problems caused by an out dated mentality.


    Ok but there remains a need to move away from the idea of DeValera's isolationist catholic state that still exists in some respects. There is little or no political gradient in this country to engender change. Hence the need for a catalyst for chance. If this is at least partly external then so be it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 930 ✭✭✭poeticseraphim


    billybudd wrote: »
    It is great to learn from others and to have peers that you can mature with but its important not to take judgement from hypocritical minds.

    If you look at the political infrastructure of Ireland it is based on many socialist ideals where people were put first, in 50's and 60's america looked on Ireland as a communist country because we had free health care and social welfare.

    What i am really saying is that there is no nirvana in any country and we all have problems caused by an out dated mentality.

    Erm.....no ....

    There was in actuality little of a welfare state....there were University fees and fees for secondary school.
    Free secondary school was only introduced in 1967....many older people today in Ireland have never finished secondary education. We did not have free healthcare?? I guess you never studied Irish history or you would never have heard of the mother and child scheme crisis??
    There had been no state funded healthcare in reality.
    In 1950, Browne proposed introducing a scheme which would provide maternity care for all mothers and healthcare for children up to the age of sixteen, funded by the taxpayer. It met with ferocious opposition from conservative elements in the Catholic hierarchy and the medical profession. The Catholic Church leadership was divided between those like Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid who believed that it was the exclusive right of all parents to provide healthcare for their child, and younger moderates like William Philbin who saw some merit in state assistance to families.
    Many doctors disapproved of the scheme, some on principle, others because they feared a loss of income and a fear of becoming a kind of civil servant, referring to the plan as "socialised medicine". n April 1951, MacBride demanded Browne's resignation as a Clann na Poblachta minister. Browne duly submitted his resignation to the Taoiseach John A. Costello for submission to President O'Kelly.[7] The resignation took effect from 11 April 1951. the Voluntary Health Insurance Board in 1957 removed the compulsory attempts of government to reform healthcare. Thus what became called the two-tier system was born, the private and public systems existing side-by-side,

    The catholic church and the right ROBBED this country of an Irish NHS...
    when Cumann na nGaedheal was in government and followed a conservative economic strategy. This involved supporting big farmers and encouraging exports of agricultural produce by improving standards and encouraging farmer education, very much in the way in which successive British administrations had done since the 1880s. At the same time, in spite of being the party of Griffith, they resisted all calls for protection for industry, believing that free access to the British market for agricultural produce was essential to the survival of the Irish economy and that this would be damaged by any move to protectionism.

    Read this

    http://test.scoilnet.ie/Res/maryodubhain100899230042_2.html

    Economic policy was driven by the same people who had been in charge since British rule they and business men wanted nothing changed. There was a veil of secrecy over cabinet decisions for years there still is.

    Economic policy for Dev did not exist beyond the economic war with Britain.

    The political structure is not based on socialist ideals....it is based upon elitism....carried on from British ideals

    We have two houses ....just like the British system...only certain people on the social ladder can get into one...like the British system.


    Yes we have a constitution....but in fact legislation is dominated and manipulated to such an extend that the constitution is mauled.


    DeV concentrated on maximizing agricultural output.
    When the First World War broke out, the implementation of home rule was postponed until the conflict was over, and the nationalists hoped unionist opposition would be overruled.

    Irish people generally enjoyed the right to free speech, free assembly, free organisation, and a varied and (mostly) uncensored media. Many initiatives had been taken by the British government to satisfy different sections of the population; old age pensions gave a weekly payment to those aged over 70, and the National University of Ireland Act of 1908 seemed to reflect an increasingly confident Catholic church that had succeeded in achieving its demands in the area of education. Most Irish farmers owned their own land, some 11 million acres having been purchased as a result of the Land Acts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. After the First World War commenced, Irish agriculturalists benefited from the extra demand in Britain for Irish foodstuffs. Conscription to the armed forces was not imposed in Ireland, but many Irish men volunteered for service in the British army, with over 200,000 serving during World War One. The Royal Irish Constabulary, mostly Catholic, and a respected force, was policing an island relatively free of serious crime.

    On the surface therefore, the years before the Rising seemed some of the more peaceful and prosperous in Ireland’s history.

    It was the British that had started to put the structure up of a welfare state....the Irish dismantled a lot of it
    . There also emerged a critical questioning of the persistence of underdevelopment, as the 1950s was the decade in which emigration damaged the national psyche and the rural hinterland and placed under strain much of the rhetoric concerning the ideal rural life and the merits of self-sufficiency. In the post-war period, until 1981,over 500,000 people emigrated from the Irish Republic. In 1958 alone almost 60,000 emigrated at a time when the population of the Republic was under 4 million people.


    The mantra was self sufficiency on a national and individual scale.
    The prosperity that accrued in the 1960s and the decline in unemployment and development of a robust export trade indicated the merits of a more open economy. With de Valera’s retirement in 1959, Seán Lemass began to implement change and Ireland engaged in a successful game of catch-up with many of the economies of Western Europe .The introduction of free secondary education in 1967, by linking greater access to further education with future economic and social development, demonstrated a commitment to change Ireland’s education system that had been dominated by an unsuccessful mission to restore the Irish language. The 1960s and 1970s were also notable for the emergence of a women’s liberation movement which successfully challenged some of the laws that discriminated against women and ensured the formation of a Council for the Status of Women.

    Irish republicans always only want to line their own pockets.

    We don't have free health care now ..have we ever ??? I don't remember it??? I always have paid. Am i being ripped off?


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 6,414 ✭✭✭kraggy


    Maybe this is a stupid question, but is a c section whike there is still a heartbeat an option if they're sure the foetus will die imminently anyway?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,438 ✭✭✭TwoShedsJackson


    MagicSean wrote: »
    It would be interesting if the doctor turned out not to be catholic

    What difference would that make? More important is what they allegedly said.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,801 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    The MMR (Maternal Mortality Ratio) in Ireland is 3:100,000 while in India it is 250:100,000 so the Indian authorities might like to get their own house in order before threatening at diplomatic incident over this tragedy.
    My sources in the medical profession tell that the situation did not play out exactly like is being portrayed in the meejah.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 290 ✭✭Atomicjuicer


    Yep, Ireland is currently one of the safest countries on the planet for pregnant women.

    What about all the women who die during abortions?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 930 ✭✭✭poeticseraphim


    kraggy wrote: »
    Maybe this is a stupid question, but is a c section whike there is still a heartbeat an option if they're sure the foetus will die imminently anyway?

    That is a surgical abortion basically. An abortion is not legal in Ireland unless the woman is dying. Not while there is a heartbeat. And a surgical abortion is not always medically favorable over a suction abortion.


    I don't think a C section would have been medically advisable..the truth is the legal situation and lack of legalized abortion is preventing the best medical treatment for women. And the pro-lifers know it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 637 ✭✭✭ruthloss


    Yep, Ireland is currently one of the safest countries on the planet for pregnant women.


    That statistic must be all the more baffling for the husband and family of Sevita. It certainly will not be a comfort to them in their grief.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 930 ✭✭✭poeticseraphim


    I just want o say it is sad how people are more preoccupied with the perception of Ireland more than they are of the reality women's rights and healthcare.

    Like it or not until we fully legalize abortion the UN sees us as denying human rights.

    And the rest of the world rightly sees us as backward.

    The reality should be enough to spur us on.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 19,801 ✭✭✭✭suicide_circus


    And the rest of the world rightly sees us as backward.

    The reality should be enough to spur us on.
    what others think of us should have no baring on our actions. Our own collective conscience, expressed through democratic means is the only thing that should "spur us on"


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,427 ✭✭✭Morag




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,962 ✭✭✭jumpguy


    James Reilly really is keeping up a terribly disappointing stint as health minister. He "glanced" at the report? How incredibly insensitive. Does he not realise Ireland is a global spotlight over this issue, and the government in the national spotlight? Is the urgency lost on him? Perhaps he could've skipped brushing his teeth a night and read it before bed.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,438 ✭✭✭positron


    +1 to above. I think he's just a puppet, acting under the orders of some seriously powerful lobbyists, like some religious group perhaps.

    Another sad day to be Irish. Another sad day. PERIOD.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,463 ✭✭✭CruelCoin


    What's this 'we' nonsense?

    There are multiple preventable deaths every day in Ireland. 'We' are not responsible for them all. Anyway to call it murder before any investigation takes place is no better than the fools that say all abortions equate to murder. It's lazy and completely illogical.

    "we" being the people who voted against abortion the last time it came up in referendum? An abortion that would have saved her life?

    We may not have put the gun in the killers hands, but we let him have it, with ammo, with the knowledge it was going to kill someone someday.

    Legalese nonsense aside, its ****ty from a societal point of view, and i'm ashamed that "we" the Irish people let this happen.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,427 ✭✭✭Morag


    CruelCoin wrote: »
    "we" being the people who voted against abortion the last time it came up in referendum?

    We didn't.

    Last referendum we votes yes to the right travel, yes to the right of information
    and we voted NO to amending the X Case High Court Ruling.

    What we did do, was allow 6 successive governments to ignore that ruling and the out come of that Referendum.

    We had our say, and they ignored it and we let them.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 37,485 ✭✭✭✭Khannie


    the truth is the legal situation and lack of legalized abortion is preventing the best medical treatment for women. And the pro-lifers know it.

    Tired of being incorrectly generalised about. I am pro life and in favour of legislating for the x case. Not everyone is a militant mentaller (on either side).


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 211 ✭✭Maggie 2


    Was the choice not taken away by the doctor?

    Correct me if I'm wrong but abortions are allowed here when the mothers life is at risk, as was the case.

    The mothers life was not at risk until after the D & C, when she was taken to ICU. The fact that she requested a termination doesn't mean that her life was at risk. She just wanted the inevitable over with, but best practice is to let nature take its course.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 10,375 ✭✭✭✭kunst nugget


    Maggie 2 wrote: »
    The mothers life was not at risk until after the D & C, when she was taken to ICU. The fact that she requested a termination doesn't mean that her life was at risk. She just wanted the inevitable over with, but best practice is to let nature take its course.

    You seem to be stating fact there. For all we know at this stage she could have been having a septic miscarriage due to an Ecoli infection. In that instance her life would have been in danger.

    Also as stated by Dr. Jean Gunther in a piece that has been linked several times so far but here it is:
    Ms. Halappanavar’s widower reported that she was leaking amniotic fluid and was fully dilated when first evaluated. There is no medically defensible position for doing anything other than optimal pain control and hastening delivery by the safest means possible.

    That doesn't sound like sitting around and waiting for nature to take it's course.


  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 2,562 ✭✭✭eyescreamcone


    Maggie 2 wrote: »
    The mothers life was not at risk until after the D & C, when she was taken to ICU. The fact that she requested a termination doesn't mean that her life was at risk. She just wanted the inevitable over with, but best practice is to let nature take its course.

    That worked out well didn't it. :mad:


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 967 ✭✭✭HeyThereDeliah


    You seem to be stating fact there. For all we know at this stage she could have been having a septic miscarriage due to an Ecoli infection. In that instance her life would have been in danger.

    Also as stated by Dr. Jean Gunther in a piece that has been linked several times so far but here it is:



    That doesn't sound like sitting around and waiting for nature to take it's course.

    The doctor in that link is stating fact also when she has no idea what the circumstances were. The lady's husband is not a doctor so its not safe to assume he knows what he is talking about.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,456 ✭✭✭fishy fishy


    shame on Ireland............again

    An embarrassment to the world..............again.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 132 ✭✭Mervyn Crawford


    Sinn Fein web site statement:
    Sinn Féin Health spokesperson Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD has said that thetragic death of Savita Halappanavar in University Hospital, Galway, underlinesthe need for long overdue legislation to provide for the termination ofpregnancy where the life of the woman is in real danger.
    He said: “I extend deepest sympathy to the family of Savita Halappanavar. Newsof her death in such tragic and traumatic circumstances has caused distress topeople throughout the country.
    “While we must await the outcome of on-going inquiries before drawingconclusions on all aspects of this particular case, it is clear that thetragedy highlights once again the need for long overdue legislation to providefor the termination of pregnancy where the life of the woman is in real danger.
    “From the testimony of the husband of the deceased it appears that Savita wasdenied a termination on alleged legal and ethical grounds, even though it wasclear that the baby would not survive and that the mother’s life was in dangerfrom infection.
    “The absence of the required legislation denies women protection and the rightto obtain a termination in such circumstances. It also creates an ambiguouslegal situation for clinicians in the same circumstances.
    “Minister James Reilly has stated that he does not wish to be the seventhMinister for Health to fail to legislate in this regard. He must keep thatcommitment.” ENDS

    Sinn Fein’s reluctant statement. A woman's life must be in "real danger".

    My understanding of the condition that Savita Halappanavar suffered is that it is not normally life threatening; but there is a small chance that it can develop into such. And sound medical practice dictates that the grave potential risk is forestalled by inducement or termination.

    As a doctor said on Pat Kenny's radio programme yesterday, in another country the patient would be asked to sign a disclaimer if she refused a termination as would be advised in the circumstances.

    So according to Ó Caoláin, which situation does he believe merits medical intervention – when Savita Halappanavar was first diagnosed as miscarrying at GalwayUniversity Hospital; or was it when she was in “real danger”?

    His reference to “alleged legal and ethical grounds” raises interrelated issues.Political position and philosophical outlook.

    Along with his view that “ …we must await the outcome of on-going inquiries before drawing conclusions on all aspects of this particular case….” Ó Caoláin makes abundantly clear that Sinn Fein are committed to the system, and all that that implies.

    For anyone with eyes to see Ireland is dominated by and riddled with a reactionary religious ideology that pervades all aspects of life. This does not mean that the great majority of people are religious reactionaries; but it does mean that the reactionaries have an insidious political control, as allies,and members, of the capitalist ruling class.

    The determined opposition on the streets, and the voices that make their way into the broadcast media, the letters pages of the press and on the web sites make equally clear that this medieval ‘ethos’ is repugnant to the population.

    Yet Sinn Fein’s ambiguity shies away from this divide in Irish society.Between those who believe that Catholic Church has a right to dictate and those who believe it does not. Hence Sinn Fein’s use of ‘ethical grounds’ in place of religious belief. This hiding of the true nature of the political world shows just where Sinn Fein’s allegiances lie– with the status quo; with the Catholic Church; with the rich.

    The true nature and views of the great mass of the people is suppressed by Sinn Fein. The fact that those who reject the barbarism meted out to Savita Halappanavar cannot find a voice within the political system reveals the true nature of that system, and all the parties and organisations that support that system.


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