Irish doctors should be allowed to perform abortions in cases of “fatal or complex foetal abnormalities” without the threat of being sent to jail, says the head of one of Ireland’s biggest maternity hsopitals.

A doctor accused of misdiagnosing an ectopic pregnancy and prescribing drugs to terminate it was following guidelines in what could have been an extremely risky situation, a Medical Council inquiry has been told.

The master of the Rotunda Hospital has told an inquiry that a doctor under review was right to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy and that conservative management of the case would have put the mother’s life at risk.

Dr Keelin O’Donoghue of CUMH has serious concerns about the failure to routinely offer a fetal anomaly scan to all women attending for antenatal care, writes Catherine Shanahan

More than 180 transition year (TY) students have watched a caesarean section via videolink.

The circumstances of a baby’s birth should have absolutely nothing to do with its human rights, writes Victoria White

Comments by the new master of the Rotunda that women carrying babies diagnosed with fatal foetal abnormalities should not have to travel to the UK for an abortion have been criticised by a group representing parents of such babies.

The new Master of the Rotunda has witnessed the tragedy of parents of babies with fatal foetal abnormalities having to “courier” their child’s remains home because of Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws.

Relocating the Rotunda, lock, stock and babies, from Dublin City centre to Blanchardstown, is Prof Fergal Malone’s ‘number one goal’. But the hospital’s new master isn’t one to shirk a challenge, reports Catherine Shanahan

DNA screening can pick up on abnormalities at nine weeks

The parents of a baby girl who died minutes after her birth are to receive €150,000 in a settlement of their negligence claim against a gynaecologist and the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin.

IDENTICAL twin baby boys Ryan and Dylan Kershaw are alive today thanks to doctors who performed Ireland’s first-ever surgery within the womb.

FEARS of an upsurge in abortions following the internet sale of kits used to test the sex of babies are unfounded.

ALMOST 50,000 babies born in eight maternity hospitals in Ireland every year are to benefit from a research programme that aims to reduce infant sickness and mortality before and soon after birth.

ONE-IN-FOUR births in Ireland are delivered via Caesarean section, new figures show.

ALMOST a third of Irish mothers have their labour induced, or started artificially.

ANY doubts about the two-tier quality of the Irish health service are swiftly dispelled by today’s analysis of the highly revealing Irish Examiner/Lansdowne Market Research survey of maternity services in the Republic.

ONE of the country’s top obstetricians has said he has misgivings about the growing 3-D ultrasound industry which has mushroomed in this country in recent years and sees women paying over 150 for a 20-minute DVD of their baby in the womb.

AN Irish doctor, who developed a two-stage test that can detect about 95% of Down syndrome and other genetic problems in unborn children, has been awarded two international awards for his pioneering work.

MOST pregnant women aged 35 to 40 give birth to perfectly healthy babies, according to one of the country’s leading experts in foetal abnormalities.

The case for a national set of guidelines for prenatal screening, which would vastly increase the detection rate for congenital defects, is convincingly made in the Irish Examiner by one of the leading experts in the field.

DEFECTS in unborn babies are not always detected because there are not enough expertly-trained personnel to perform ultrasounds, an expert in foetal abnormalities has warned.