Abortion laws: Doctors play ‘roulette’ with lives

Rhona Mahony, master of the NMH, said doctors can only carry out an abortion if there is a substantial risk to the life of the mother.

Doctors have to play “medical roulette” with patients’ lives in applying Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws, the head of the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) said.

It comes as figures show 21 of the 3,735 who travelled to the UK for abortions last year were children.

The obstetrician asked how is a substantial risk defined: “Is it 10%, 20%, 80%? This is medical roulette.”

Dr Mahony was speaking at the launch of an Amnesty International report, ‘She Is Not a Criminal’, which called for the decriminalisation of abortion and services which would, at a minimum, allow for abortion where there is a risk to either the life or health of a pregnant woman, in cases of severe and fatal foetal impairment and in the event of rape and incest.

This would involve repeal of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2015 allowed for abortion in three circumstances: A “real and substantive risk” of loss of life from physical illness; an “immediate risk” of loss of life from physical illness in an emergency; and a “real and substantive risk” of loss of life from suicide.

“This presumes that clinicians can accurately predict the risk of dying,” said Dr Mahony. “The point at which serious illness progresses to a possibility of dying doesn’t come clearly marked.”

She described a High Court case last December of a brain dead pregnant woman who was kept on life support in hospital as a “macabre experiment”.

The Amnesty report said pregnant women and girls were putting their health and lives in danger if they remained in Ireland.

Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty said Ireland’s abortion laws “violate the rights of woman and girls”.

Report author Christina Zampas said: “The situation in Ireland is one of the worst I’ve seen for deliberate denial of care,” adding that women and health professionals could face up to 14 years in prison if they acted outside the act.

Amnesty Ireland director Colm O’Gorman said he believed Irish people would be “shocked, outraged, and horrified” by the report.

The Pro Life Campaign said Amnesty had become a “de facto campaigning group” on one side of the debate and was no longer an “unbiased and impartial defender of human rights”.

Meanwhile, UK figures show there was a 1.5% increase, to 3,735, in the numbers of women and girls giving Irish addresses at abortion clinics in 2014.

However, the charity, Abortion Support Network, claims the numbers travelling are far higher and do not include women who give English addresses or who obtain abortion pills online.

The Irish Family Planning Agency, which provides counselling to more than 3,000 clients annually, said the numbers travelling “highlights the State’s continued failure to uphold women’s right to health” and called for reform of abortion laws through constitutional means.

www.amnesty.ie; www.ifpa.ie