Madam, – The decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in the C case is not surprising. In some ways, it may even be a good thing, in that it draws attention to the plight women who are diagnosed with cancer while pregnant here in Ireland.
The incidence of women who develop cancer while pregnant is, internationally, increasing. This is partly because more women are having their first baby in their late 30s, but also because the incidence of cancer is rising. Here in Ireland, for example, the number of women under 50 who developed cancer of the breast increased from 451 in 2000 to 600 in 2007. If one accepts international statistics, one would expect 60-70 women to develop cancer while pregnant every year in Ireland.
Anyone who has been through treatment for cancer or has a relative who has been through it, knows how gruelling that is. When one adds the burden of pregnancy and the added anxiety of the outcome for the baby it becomes well nigh unbearable. Small wonder then, that, in countries where abortion is freely available, some oncologists will refuse to treat a pregnant woman before she has had an abortion.
This, however, is not medically necessary. Recent studies in other countries have shown that women who continue their pregnancy while undergoing treatment for cancer do as well as non-pregnant women or women who opt for abortion.
Two small studies even found that they did better than women who opted for abortion. By observing certain precautions – avoiding some drugs altogether, chemotherapy in the first trimester and radiation in the last trimester in the case of cancer of the breast – the babies also did well. In these circumstances, the babies did not have an increase in congenital abnormalities – it is thought that chemotherapy does not easily pass through the placenta.
However, the incidence of low birth weight was found to be increased. In 2001, a long-term evaluation of 84 mothers who had received chemotherapy for cancer of the blood while pregnant in the 1970s found no evidence of congenital abnormalities or cancer in either the children or the grandchildren.
The last thing a pregnant woman needs is pressure on her to have an abortion. She needs the best possible treatment for herself and her unborn baby from an obstetrician trained in oncology. Or from an oncologist in collaboration with an obstetrician who is concerned for the welfare of her unborn baby. Whether this is to be in a specially designated maternity or general hospital needs to be decided.
She also needs support from one of the many cancer support groups. The setting up a National Register of such women is also to be recommended.
The last thing the country needs is another expensive and divisive referendum where those who want the X-case judgment overturned are forced to vote in favour of abolishing the 1861 “chilling” ban on abortion and vice versa. Strange that the Labour Party did not legislate for the X case when it was in government with Fianna Fáil in 1993. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Women who want to avail of their right to choose an abortion, for whatever reason, should be allowed to do so in Ireland. It really is none of my business and it’s unacceptable to me that Irish women have to travel to another country for an abortion.
As for those in the pro-life brigade, did their clocks stop at 1982? There is no reason why a woman, who is not you or your partner, having an abortion, should impact on your life in any way. Bearing in mind the sort of people who are so heavily invested in the pro-life movement, are the same sort who manage very well to look the other way while the church, whose moral rulings they claim to be defending, condemned thousands of women to Magdalene Laundries and facilitated the emotional and sexual abuse of generations of children, it shouldn’t be too much of an extra effort for them to keep looking the other way and ignore what they don’t want to see. We all know the Irish are world experts on going into denial about things they don’t want to face up to.
No one has any credibility to speak on this issue from a religious standpoint, be they a cleric or lay person, until their church has faced up to the sexual and violent abuse it inflicted on people over generations. When it does that, and when the pro-life lobby demands the church hands over all its file, its control of schools and hospitals, and pays proper moral, emotional and financial compensation to its victims, then come back and moralise to the rest of us about abortion.
Until then, they should please just shut up and focus their Catholic outrage on helping actual living people who are homeless, poor or lonely. – Yours, etc,