Sir As a nurse, I find myself profoundly upset by the question recently highlighted in media reports involving the launch of a new amniocentesis service at Dublin's Rotunda Hospital. No one of us can have other than the utmost sympathy for parents faced with the daunting challenges involved in the birth of a handicapped child.
I have looked after many such patients throughout my nursing career. To glimpse the anguish of the mother involved, I can only think of my own recent pregnancies and what it must be like to find that the baby has some handicap. Every help should be available to these parents to help them care for their child.
However we are told both by Dr McKenna and in the article by Kathryn Holmquist (The Irish Times, January 12th) that this new pre natal testing is not about termination, but about information. How can this be, when one looks at the Northern Ireland figures? Seventy per cent of women in whom amniocentesis confirmed severe spina bifida sought abortions, 90 per cent sought abortions in the case of Downs Syndrome (Irish Medical Times, January 5th) Kathryn Holmquist writes that the Rotunda Hospital, of which Dr McKenna is master, admits that 50 per cent of the babies in its care when found to be abnormal were subsequently aborted. Much as I might find Dr McKenna's apparent disregard for statistics annoying, his remarks when interviewed were more chilling. He outlined an advantage of the newly available procedure, in that it facilitated women on deciding whether to continue with a pregnancy or not. This is remarkable from an obstetrician whose duty it is to care for a mother and her baby and whose duty it also is to care for patients without discrimination, be they handicapped not be they born or not.
I find it difficult, both as a mother and a nurse, to imagine any other branch of medicine where the introduction of a new testing technique, carrying with it a subsequent risk of a 50 per cent mortality rate, would be tolerated, let alone welcomed. - Yours, etc.,
Howth Road,
Dublin 5.