IMO chief criticises publicity

The president of the Irish Medical Organisation, Dr Neil Brennan, has said he believes very strongly that it is not in the interests of the 13-year-old girl at the centre of the latest abortion row that the case should ever have come into the public domain. It was "an appalling vista, to quote from another context", he said, and he considered it "voyeuristic, in the worst sense of the word, to have this family's dilemma on the airwaves".

There was such a thing as confidentiality, he continued. He felt that interviews with her parents should be stopped. Both the child and her family were entitled to privacy at this time, and he believed others had an obligation to respect that privacy.

"How can this child be protected from knowing her case is now in the public domain?" he asked.

He believed the child and her family were entitled to privacy, and that others had an obligation to respect that privacy. He did not believe that confidentiality in the case of a minor should ever be overridden by the public interest.

The family was clearly in a quandary about the matter, he said, but ultimately he believed decision about the child, and her baby's future, was a matter for the child, her parents and the Eastern Health Board if it had a statutory role in the case.

The medical profession was divided on the abortion issue, he said. But he believed it was not the profession's business to tell the family what to do.