Sir, – I refer to the article by Niall Behan CEO of the Irish Family Planning Association (Opinion, January 17th). He asks that the right of women to have life-saving abortions be vindicated by the new expert group and that they should draft legislation.
That will sound clear and convincing for many of your readers, but why does he not give any examples of such cases and what does he mean by the words “right” and “abortion”? I suggest that right is better used as an adjective in all cases where one is claiming the need for some change. Then one would have to say why it is right. Those who use it as a noun are dodging that question by saying that there is a “right” and now no reason needs to be given.
Words have uses rather than meanings and the word abortion is now used differently from when I began working as an obstetrician/gynaecologist in Ireland 38 years ago. Then it was a medical term meaning a miscarriage, but with the vast growth of abortion on demand in Britain, we had to talk about miscarriages instead and abortion for most people now refers to what goes on over there.
The point is that if the woman’s life is in genuine danger, then the unfortunate very young human being inside her is also doomed and cannot be saved. If we end the pregnancy in such situations, it would be absurd to use the word abortion. Doctors are not legally obliged to do the impossible. For example I have operated on a case of ectopic pregnancy where the patient was bleeding internally and yet I could see a foetal heart-beat on the scan before I operated. It was not illegal to save her life and any doctor in this situation will have done the same. I did not need legislation to enable me to operate.
Similarly it is not very rare to encounter the situation of a severely hydrocephalic spina bifida baby where the mother is in labour and she would eventually die from the obstructed labour. It is a simple matter to decompress the foetal head and allow a normal delivery and most obstetricians will have had to deal with this situation. As in the previous case, the procedure is not illegal and there is nothing in law to deter an obstetrician from carrying out the correct life-saving procedure. Even if a dangerous Caesarean section were to be done, the baby could not survive.
So do we need “legislation”? I do not think so and the absence of any campaign from my fellow gynaecologists in Ireland suggests that the majority would think similarly. We must all be suspicious that Niall Behan is seeking legislation to start a process leading to the horrors of the abortion-on- demand situation in Britain. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I welcome the establishment by the Government of a committee to examine ways of implementing the European Court of Human Rights judgment concerning our legal obligations on abortion (Opinion, January 17th). Following a Supreme Court ruling that is now 20 years old, two failed referendums designed to overturn that ruling and most recently, the European judgment, the moral cowardice in confronting this issue that has gripped all governments since 1992 must finally end.
We’ve had the endless debates and referendums. Now is the time for legislative action. – Yours, etc,