Minister calls for IFPA investigation.

Illegal advice by Irish Family Planning Association to be Investigated.

The story in last Saturday's Irish Independent is beginning to cause a stir in political circles. As of yet the national broadcaster, RTÉ have refused to cover the story other than a mention in their online presence. They even refused to cover it in their "As it says in the papers" section. This is another example of the pro-abortion bias which has taken hold of the entity which, despite advertizing revenue and forcing every household in the state to pay a €160 tax still can't stop losing money. If you haven't already then go take a look at www.hearbothsides.org and see examples of RTÉ's bias in this area. There was no mention of it at all in the Irish Times. Maybe they're waiting for Ireland's leading intellectual Fintan O'Toole to offer more advice to Ireland's farmers before they comment. Gemma O'Doherty has followed up her story from Saturday with some of the political reaction.

HSE chiefs face grilling over illegal advice on abortions

HSE chiefs are to be quizzed by a Dail committee about revelations that staff at some state-funded crisis pregnancy services gave illegal and medically dangerous advice to women during one-to-one counselling sessions.
And Junior Minister for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton described the allegations - revealed in the Irish Independent on Saturday - as "extremely serious" and said they "must be investigated by all of the appropriate authorities".

The full story is to be found here.

The Irish Family Planning Association offers a "comprehensive range of services" even ones detrimental to women's health.

Abortion campaigner uses taxpayer funds to endanger women's health!

It was revealed in this morning's Irish Independent that the Crisis Pregnancy Program which comes under the HSE is implicated in a scandal whereby women were offered advice that was dangerous and potentially illegal. It is astounding that an organization like the IFPA which is Ireland's leading pro-abortion organization to the extent it took the state to court receives taxpayer funds in order to advance its agenda. The money it receives is to provide non-directive counselling. Instead we see that the advice offered isn't just in contravention of those conditions it is dangerous and potentially illegal. It's time for our elected representatives and especially the Minister for Health, Dr Reilly to call for an investigation.
This story is due to the excellent investigative reporting of Gemma O'Doherty and the women who actually caught the IFPA people on tape.

Revealed: the abortion advice that could put lives at risk.

   
STAFF at some taxpayer-funded pregnancy counselling services are putting women's lives at risk and breaking the law, an undercover probe has revealed.Some of the advice they gave about abortion was illegal, according to a leading lawyer, and some was medically dangerous, a top doctor says.In several instances, women were told to hide their abortions from their doctors, a course of action that could endanger life if post-surgery abortion complications remain undiagnosed.

Read more here.

Also in today's Irish Independent medical and legal experts have their say on this story.

Shocking breach of good medical practice, says Rotunda chief

A LEADING obstetrician has warned that advice given by some taxpayer-funded pregnancy-counselling services is putting women's lives in danger.
Sam Coulter Smith, clinical professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal College of Surgeons, said he was "shocked and very disappointed" to learn that Irish women who travel to Britain for abortions are being told they should hide this from their doctors.
The findings, which emerged as part of an undercover investigation into crisis-pregnancy counselling services, are now the subject of an HSE probe.

More about that here.
Considering the fact that the Minister for Health thinks that the former head of the IFPA is an appropriate person to head the HSE the question must be asked, is the HSE the appropriate body to investigate this scandal?

500, no, 5,000, no, 2,500, no 2,000 ...

I was going to blog about the March for abortion choice which goes under the rather disingenuous title March for Choice (variously #march4choice and #marchforchoice on Twitter), I mean what choice are they talking about? Boxers or briefs, paper or plastic? No they want the choice to kill human persons. Anyway I could go on about that but as I said I was going to blog about the march but the story of the day wasn't the march itself or the rather predictable speeches (the capitalist bishops want to control your fertility and ignore the bank bailout - Clare Wallace neé Daly, late of the Socialist Party) but the numbers fiasco.
I'd link to the story in the Irish Times, posted almost two hours after the conclusion of the march, that mentioned how the turnout was dismal, around 500 only it changed later that night. Between 6PM and about 11 Twitter was alive with people encouraging pro abortion choice advocates to contact the Irish Times, eventually the paper of Ricard relented and changed to a rather vague report of thousands turning up.
Anyway, the fiasco is captured pretty comprehensibly here in this new blog.   The Quicker goes the journalist the slower go his thoughts.

PLC says National Women’s Council of Ireland no longer a “mainstream representative group for Irish women”

The National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) is the representative organisation for some women and certain women's groups in Ireland. They now support abortion at all stages. They can no longer claim to represent all women or all women's organizations. Last year they attacked Women Hurt for having the temerity to speak out about their own experiences of abortion. Now they're giving comfort to the most extreme element in the pro abortion movement in Ireland. I really hope that some of their member organizations let them know that they do not speak for them.

PLC says National Women’s Council of Ireland no longer a “mainstream representative group for Irish women”

27th September 2012

Speaking in response to a statement issued today by the National Women's Council of Ireland calling for abortion legislation, Dr. Ruth Cullen, Education Spokesperson of the Pro Life Campaign said;
"The NWCI can no longer call themselves a mainstream representative group for Irish women. Only last year the NWCI launched a scathing attack on Women Hurt,  for simply launching a billboard campaign drawing attention to abortion regret and the stories of women seeking hope and healing after abortion.
In citing public support for abortion today, it is interesting to note that the NWCI quoted a recent poll which made no distinction between necessary medical interventions in pregnancy and induced abortion which targets the life of the baby. Polls that do not make this ethical distinction are meaningless in the current abortion debate."

The same statement with some additional comment can be found here. 

Let's clear up a few things ...

Ireland has to legislate for the X Case ... yet there are huge flaws with this judgement. Ireland has to bring in abortion some European court told us after the ABC judgement ... well no actually they didn't. Don't take my word for it take the word of Dr Maria Cahill LLB, LLM, PhD.

The original article is available on the website of the Sunday Business Post but behind a paywall here. It has been reproduced on the Pro Life Campaign website here.

European court's abortion judgment not black and white

Dr Maria Cahill LLB, LLM, PhD

This article appeared in the print edition of the Sunday Business Post on 23rd September 2012

Anybody who claims, by reference to the decision in ABC v Ireland that Ireland is now compelled to legislate for abortion, arrives at their conclusion without much assistance from the judgment.
In fact, the court regularly uses 'mother' as a synonym for pregnant woman and 'her child' as a synonym for foetus. It rules that there is no right to an abortion under Article 8 of the European Convention, and, affirming its earlier ruling in Vo v France, holds that contracting states are entitled under the convention "to choose to consider the unborn to be a person and to aim to protect that life".
Acknowledging that there is broad consensus across the contracting states towards allowing abortion on looser grounds than those required by Irish law, the court nevertheless allows Ireland a broad margin of appreciation because there is "no European consensus on the scientific and legal definition of the beginning of life".
The judgment declares that protecting unborn life, as the Irish Constitution does by means of Article 40.3.3, is "a legitimate aim" and also "necessary in a democratic society" such as Ireland, where the majority of people value the right to life of unborn children. On this basis – that the Irish constitutional protection for the right to life of the unborn is compatible with the convention – the court rejects the claims of Applicants A and B.
Applicant C, the Lithuanian national, was in remission from an unspecified cancer when she became pregnant. Understandably concerned and fearful for her health, she searched online to assess her medical risks and travelled to England for an abortion.
She did not seek legal advice in Ireland and there are conflicting claims on the question of whether or not she consulted her oncologist after she became pregnant. (None of the facts of the case was proven, so this remains undetermined.)
The court ruled that Ireland was in violation of the convention for lack of "an accessible and effective procedure" by which Applicant C could have known her medical and legal position.
So, the take-home messages are that Article 40.3.3 of the Irish Constitution is compatible with the convention; that the prohibition on abortion is compatible with the convention, as the court confirmed by ruling against Applicants A and B; but that there is a problem of lack of clarity in cases where women face medical threats to their lives, as the court determined by finding in favour of Applicant C.
In order to address the lack of clarity that the court found to be problematic, we must therefore focus on the person in the circumstances of Applicant C; that is, on the woman who faces a medical risk to her life during her pregnancy.
While we cannot know exactly how the legal and medical professionals failed Applicant C because of the lack of evidence presented, we do know that Ireland is internationally recognised for the exceptional standard of care provided to women in the same position as Applicant C, and consistently ranks first or second in the world for lowest maternal mortality rates.
It is unquestionably the case that, had her cancer returned and had she sought treatment in Ireland, Applicant C's medical team would have acted to save her life, and her treatment plan could have included radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hysterectomy or any other treatment, notwithstanding that the unintended but foreseeable side-effect of such treatments may potentially have been the loss of her child.
The problem is then that there was no procedure that made this clear enough to her, with the result that she trusted her own Google-searched self-diagnosis, rather than trusting the care that she would have received at the hands of the medical professionals. Therefore, the clarification needed is that the current best practice two-patient model, whereby every medical effort is made to care for the lives of both mother and child, should be placed on a regulatory or statutory footing so that women in the circumstances of Applicant C can be assured that the medical care they need will be provided, to the highest international standard.
Still, those procedures are only useful if a woman has already entrusted herself to the care of a doctor.
For the sake of any other woman like Applicant C, who would turn in desperation to Google in order to self-assess her chances of dying, the Department of Health should initiate an information campaign highlighting that world-leading healthcare is provided to women and children as standard throughout pregnancy. It is an injustice to women such as Applicant C that our outstanding record of maternal health care is such a well-kept secret.
This approach does not necessitate giving legislative effect to the decision in the X case, which is legitimate because Applicant C did not argue suicidal ideation, and therefore her legal position is different to that of the woman in X.
Despite the great clarity with which Article 40.3.3 affirms that the right to life of the mother and the right to life of the unborn are "equal", the Supreme Court ruled in the X case that the right to life of the mother is "superior" to the right to life of the unborn which was labelled "contingent". This departure from the unambiguous constitutional position and the two-patient model it inspires resulted in the legal outcome that, if a mother threatens to commit suicide, the Supreme Court holds that she has the right to an abortion.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court reached this conclusion without hearing expert psychiatric evidence, nor could it have been aware of the huge volume of medical research which has emerged since and which shows that abortion is not a treatment for suicide, but may actually increase its risk.
Furthermore, in the X case there were no time limits placed on that right to abortion in case of suicide. Therefore, bringing clarity to the position held in the X case would entail legislating or regulating for an extremely liberal position on abortion – one that would allow all women who establish that they are at risk of committing suicide to have abortions right up until the moment they give birth.
Any temporal restrictions that the legislature would impose would be inconsistent with the X case, and would therefore add another layer of confusion to the current position, which is the exact opposite of what ABC exhorts. (To overturn the X case, and return to the original clear meaning of Article 40.3.3 which is expressly endorsed by the European Court of Human Rights in ABC, we could pass a constitutional amendment by referendum.)
Ultimately, since the European Court of Human Rights holds that there is no right to an abortion under the convention and that Ireland is entitled to protect the right to life of the unborn child, since the ABC case did not concern suicidal ideation, and since the X case does more to obscure than to clarify the legal position, the most reasonable, proportionate and effective way of responding to ABC v Ireland in order to afford clarity to those in the position of Applicant C is to regulate for the two-patient model – which is the current best practice in Irish hospitals and internationally celebrated.
Dr Maria Cahill is a lecturer in law at UCC

Pro Life Campaign National Seminar 2012

The Pro Life Campaign had its national seminar earlier today. The room was packed and people were treated to a series of great speakers. Not just Matt Mooney who I saw speak earlier in the week but also Dr Patricia Casey, Dr Berry Kiely, Caroline Simons, Professor William Binchy. Joe McCarroll and Cora Sherlock spoke on behalf of the Pro Life Campaign. The full story is found here.

99 Balloons

I always thought 99 (red) balloons was a rather cheesy song from the 1980s. Well it still is. At the same time, however, it is also the title of video that will bring a tear to even the hardest of hearts. I'm posting this here in this blog because I believe it to be very relevant to the discussion going on right now in Ireland. Matt & Ginny Mooney could have made the decision to end the life of their son Eliot before he was born, with his so called "abnormalities" he would never grow up to what the world describes as greatness. He was for his short life precious to them, more precious than if he won Olympic Gold and went on to lead his country.
 I went to hear Matt speak earlier tonight, the man has a great gift.

 

Not viable for life eh? Listen to Matt Mooney and learn differently. Check out the Mooney's blog.