Sir, – Kitty Holland says that as the law stands, doctors must be “absolutely certain in their judgment” when diagnosing a “fatal foetal abnormality” before certifying an abortion on those grounds.
This, she contends, is causing doctors to be overly cautious in such cases, due to fear of prosecution (“Difficulties in accessing abortion in cases of fatal foetal anomaly, review finds”, News, July 12th).
But this is not what the recent HSE report says, and it is certainly not what the law says.
Section 11 of the legislation requires two consultants to certify based on a “reasonable opinion formed in good faith” that an unborn child will not survive beyond 28 days after birth. In layman’s terms this means that, having examined a woman and her unborn child, the consultants must reach this conclusion based on an honest and objective appraisal of the evidence before them.
It does not mean that doctors have to be “absolutely certain” about their diagnosis. In the words of Dr Jerome Kassirer, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, “absolute certainty in diagnosis is unattainable, no matter how much information we gather, or how many tests we perform”.
A doctor could only be prosecuted under section 11 if it could be shown that they had dishonestly certified that an unborn child would not survive longer than 28 day after birth, or had reached such a conclusion without any reasonable basis in the evidence available to them.
This is a very high bar, and one which no competent medical professional should fear.
Painting section 11 as having this so-called “chilling effect” is part of a tried and tested tactic whereby the existing laws – no matter how liberal they may be – are portrayed as posing insurmountable barriers to obtaining an abortion. This is then cited as a justification for the continual erosion of whatever token restrictions remain in place. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.
Sir, – As a mother of a baby girl who was diagnosed with what campaigners call a “fatal foetal abnormality”, I find the renewed debate around abortion for these babies to be both distressing and frustrating.
There is so much misinformation and the media only tells one side of the story, presumably because it supports the push to broaden the grounds on which an abortion can be carried out after a diagnosis of a disability.
After a diagnosis of a life-limiting condition, there is another option other than abortion. Working with the support group Every Life Counts, we have helped more than 100 families cherish and value their baby’s too-short lives, and find healing after such a terrible loss. It is bewildering to me that continuing to carry your baby never seems to be mentioned in media reports as an option. This may be driving a dangerous mindset now evident in some maternity hospitals where abortion is pushed as a first option.
Your most recent report intimated that the process of diagnosing a severe disability was too long or complex in Irish hospitals. Have we already forgotten the Baby Christopher case, where parents were pushed toward abortion without a second test which would have shown that the baby was perfectly healthy. Have we learned nothing from the tragic loss of that child?
It has also been claimed that Irish women are travelling to abort babies because of a life-limiting condition. In fact, figures from the British department of health shows that most “Ground E” abortions in Britain are being carried out on Irish women because the baby has Down syndrome or spina bifida or a heart condition. The figures show the numbers travelling for abortions because of Edwards syndrome or anencephaly have now dropped almost to zero.
If campaigners want disability abortion legalised in Ireland then they should at least have the honesty to admit that. But please stop using babies like my Líadán to further an abortion agenda.
It is cruel and it is misleading. – Yours, etc,
VICKY WALL,
Dungarvan,
Co Waterford.