HSE to probe teen’s abortion refusal
However, the inquiry will be limited to the procedural and care aspects of the case and will not question the decision of a doctor or doctors to decline the young woman’s abortion request and deliver her severely premature baby by caesarean section instead.
HSE director general Tony O’Brien took the step amid growing concern over the case, which invoked the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act passed last year, with the aim of clarifying the handling of abortion requests by suicidal women.
The HSE said: “The director general will seek to establish the full facts surrounding the matter, the sequence of events, the care given to the woman involved, the operation of the 2013 Act and any learnings that can be gleaned from the case. It is hoped the report will end any inaccurate commentary surrounding this matter currently.”
Questions hang over delays between the time the woman sought an abortion, early in her pregnancy, and her eventual admission to hospital as a suicide risk, and between that time and her reluctant consent to a caesarean section late in her second trimester.
Immigration officials, social workers, and medics are to be questioned to establish if there was any breakdown in communication or care in the case. However, the inquiry will not question the judgment of two psychiatrists and an obstetrician tasked with assessing the suicide risk posed by the woman and choosing between abortion and premature delivery.
“As they had a specific statutory function as detailed in the 2013 Act, this report will not seek to review the decision taken by the clinicians involved,” said the HSE.
The report is to be completed in six weeks and made public “subject to privacy restrictions”.
The move was broadly welcomed, with the Rape Crisis Network of Ireland saying it was essential to establish the facts so that the Government could take action to ensure the woman’s ordeal was never repeated.
However, it has done little to quench the reignited abortion controversy, with calls from both pro-choice and anti-abortion lobbies to scrap the 2013 Act.
Public demonstrations by pro-choice groups are planned for Dublin and Galway tomorrow, but anti-abortion groups have hit back, accusing campaigners of exploiting the situation.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party has been forced to effectively set out part of its 2016 general election manifesto by restating its support for the wider introduction of abortion — a policy it has had to sit on while in Coalition.
Tánaiste Joan Burton said Labour supported lifting the constitutional ban on abortion by repealing the 8th amendment, but stressed that her party and Fine Gael had only agreed to legislate for the X case, as they did in the 2013 Act, and no more.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny ruled out any legislative changes under his administration.
His spokesman said Fine Gael had promised before the last general election not to legalise abortion.
