Sir, – Being kept on life support while a team of people decides if you will be treated like an incubator or a human is archaic and saddening ("Medical dilemma over woman on life support", Front Page, December 18th).
This woman is not being kept “alive”, she is being perfused and ventilated inhumanely because the Government refuses to act on repealing the eighth amendment before the next election. This cowardice has meant that twice in the last year, doctors have been left with bizarre situations where the foetus has actually become more important than the woman. This is complete madness. How many more women have to be treated like vessels, solely here for the purpose of growing foetuses?
People talk about reaching a stage of viability, but this term is extremely misleading. I am a paediatric doctor working in a neonatal intensive care unit and babies being born at 24 weeks isn’t something that we should be aspiring to or relieved about when it happens. It means life support for a period of time, four months in intensive care, a high chance of severe disability and a 50 per cent chance of death.
Delivering babies once they become “viable” is not the answer to this legal mess. – Yours, etc,
Dr AISLING GEOGHEGAN,
Dublin 1.
Sir, – Over 31 years ago I opposed the insertion of the eighth amendment to the Constitution on abortion, feeling that the wording was not understandable and its consequences were unclear. The outcome of the insertion of Article 40.3.3 into the Constitution cannot be what those who proposed it intended.
We have lurched from one disaster to another with a pregnant woman or girl at the centre of each calamity and doctors in the unenviable position of being unclear what they can do, with lawyers leaning over their shoulders. The Minister for Health Leo Varadkar spoke the truth when he said that the health of the pregnant woman, even if she has a serious problem, cannot be taken into consideration as things are ("Existing abortion laws are 'too restrictive', says Varadkar", December 17th).
He could have said more about cases where the developing child has a fatal foetal abnormality, diagnosed nowadays during pregnancy, which was not the case three decades ago.
He could have pointed out that we now know some women in such situations are having the abortion of such a foetus initiated in England but the second stage carried out in Ireland, either for financial reasons or because she and her partner wish to have the child buried in Ireland. How long before there is a disaster on a plane or a ferry?
How long will we ignore the fact that hundreds of women are importing abortifacient pills without medical supervision? Without counselling in these cases, the embryo will certainly be lost and a woman’s life may be too.
The removal of Article 40.3.3 is a health issue, one of great importance to women, and it is right that the Minister for Health should have spoken on the present unsatisfactory situation. – Yours, etc,
MARY HENRY, MD
Dublin 4.
Sir, – Perhaps the most important words in Leo Varadkar’s speech on Clare Daly’s Bill to repeal the eighth amendment of the Constitution were these: “We can never say ‘never again’ and think to mean it. We need to face up to that and be honest about it. There is no perfect abortion law and never will be. We will always be challenged to amend and refine whatever law we have and so we should.”
They sum up precisely why we must urgently remove the complex issue of abortion from our Constitution and deal with it through legislation that can be amended when its shortcomings become obvious. – Yours, etc,
Dr SANDRA McAVOY,
Cork.