Woman 'denied a termination' dies in hospital

[seekerz]

I agree that we can only guess. The article doesn’t give enough information to know exactly what happened, what could have been done and what couldn’t have been done. It never tells us why the mother was septicemic or what early measures they took or didn’t take. “The Catholic Church” does not equal medical causation. Medical causation is not established in the article.

It does seem the article’s purpose is to affect public attitudes toward the legalization of abortion in Ireland, and not much else.

The mother became septicemic because infection spread from the uterus to the blood: a predictable and well-known complication when the water breaks early.

To dismiss this as just one more part of the abortion wars is to overlook the very real pain that this has caused to many people.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

OK, I just heard the report on NBC News with Brian Williams.

When the mother was told that she was going to miscarry, her and her husband asked for an abortion, which the doctors refused, because the fetus still had a heart beat.

According to the NBC report, the mother became infected AFTER the miscarriage.

So, from my wife’s opinion,(she’s a retired nurse) the abortion wouldn’t have prevented the infection.

You can bet this story is going to be spun in extreme directions by both sides of the issue.

Jim

 

[St_Francis]

This is the sort of thing I have discussed repeatedly in discussions of ‘no exceptions’ abortion and to date the most I’ve gotten is: it is left to the mother and her doctors and depends the particular circumstances. See, that never really made much sense to me: it’s not like there are an infinite number of diagnoses that can complicate a pregnancy. Why should a woman’s right to life get decided on at the time it is in danger and how can someone be faulted for making the wrong decision in the heat of the moment?

The Church teaches what can *not *be done, the rest is up to the doctor and patient.

Taking a more clear-cut example: a pregnant woman is dxed with cancer. The doctors want to give her an abortion and start chemo right away.

That is obviously wrong, and the Church teaches that. However, excluding the abortion, what occurs next is determined by the patient and doctor: they have a range of options from which to choose.

The main problem here seems to be a lack of understanding of what is permitted on tye part of doctors wrt the law, and on the part of politicians wrt what is morally licit.

In much the same way as we discuss what is licit or not licit in cancer or ectopics, we should be able to say what is the licit treatment of infected uterine contents (baby, placenta, membranes) or life-threatening uterine bleeding. If it’s up to the woman and her doctors then it should not be presented by doctors/politicians as a decision imposed by the Church.

 

[Don_Jackson]

Its an emotional topic, hence all the bickering back and forth.

It was actually painful to go through all the posts, many with diverging opinions that were less than charitable towards each other.

Let us stop and pray for the repose of the souls of the departed, and for the comfort of those who love them.

Can I have an Amen?!

 

[FrederickOz]

This is obviously a tragic case and my prayers are with the family.

One thing that strikes me about this case is that it actually supports the pro life position. It shows if nothing else how infrequently that abortion is actually needed to save the life of the mother (and that’s assuming that in the case an abortion would have helped and from what I can see that’s very unclear)

 

[seekerz]

I read about the case in Latin America, where cancer treatment was delayed for a few weeks while the doctors tried to sort out the legal aspect, and this case.

In both cases, treatment could have been given to the mother earlier and would have been moral according to the principle of double effect.** This is what the Catholic Church teaches. **In each case, it might have been that despite treatment, the mother would have died, because that sometimes does happen, that patients die despite treatment.

It is good that you are taking your conversion seriously and trying to learn all that you need to know to make a good decision and hopefully act as a good Catholic–that is very commendable! But I would caution you about taking too seriously what you read in the newspapers and comment columns, because very often people are emotional about something or even have an agenda of their own, and say things which indicate a lack of understanding about Catholic teaching.

These issues have been clarified within the Church over the course of hundreds of years. The problem is that not everyone is well-versed in what needs to be taken into consideration and then when they are faced with a situation like this one or the one in Latin America, they do not know what to do. An emergency situation is *not *the time to do research! The moral teachings needed should have been taught to the doctors in both (actually all!!) countries so that they would already know what to do when the emergency occurred.

The Church understands that every life is important and does not expect anyone at all to die for the sake of another. If you are at a higher risk of miscarriage, you might feel the need to get in touch with a priest or moral theologian who will be able to advise you should you face that situation, and you might want to contact some people like the Pope Paul VI Instititute for information so that you yourself are educated a bit in how this all works.

Good to see serious discussion of this issue because I agree with the former poster: it is important to clarify. Apparently, in some countries, the understanding of biology that lawmakers have (and the sources of medical advice they seek) oversimplifies the whole issue of pregnancy complications and can place women’s lives at risk. There is no bright flashing line to say when a woman goes from sick to deathly sick, as I’ve experienced personally.

These decisions should be left to the judgment of doctors and ethics committees on a case by case basis without fear of criminal penalties. We are no longer in the days when an ectopic pregnancy had to rupture before treatment could be rendered, why should a woman have to suffer for days to allow her baby to die inside her? From what I have read, the doctors told the couple very early on that the baby would not survive and the risk of infection was not unknown. Would delivering the baby have been illicit? That’s what I’d like to know.

 

[seekerz]

Its an emotional topic, hence all the bickering back and forth.

It was actually painful to go through all the posts, many with diverging opinions that were less than charitable towards each other.

Let us stop and pray for the repose of the souls of the departed, and for the comfort of those who love them.

Can I have an Amen?!

Amen!

 

[seekerz]

The Church teaches what can *not *be done, the rest is up to the doctor and patient.

Taking a more clear-cut example: a pregnant woman is dxed with cancer. The doctors want to give her an abortion and start chemo right away.

That is obviously wrong, and the Church teaches that. However, excluding the abortion, what occurs next is determined by the patient and doctor: they have a range of options from which to choose.

The main problem here seems to be a lack of understanding of what is permitted on tye part of doctors wrt the law, and on the part of politicians wrt what is morally licit.

In much the same way as we discuss what is licit or not licit in cancer or ectopics, we should be able to say what is the licit treatment of infected uterine contents (baby, placenta, membranes) or life-threatening uterine bleeding. If it’s up to the woman and her doctors then it should not be presented by doctors/politicians as a decision imposed by the Church.

Lack of understanding of what? I understand why they don’t understand, because I’ve never gotten a definitive answer (this has come up before, many times). May the infected or bleeding uterine contents be licitly delivered or no?

 

[seekerz]

This is obviously a tragic case and my prayers are with the family.

One thing that strikes me about this case is that it actually supports the pro life position. It shows if nothing else how infrequently that abortion is actually needed to save the life of the mother (and that’s assuming that in the case an abortion would have helped and from what I can see that’s very unclear)

Is this an uncommon situation? From what I’ve read, it’s not - it’s just not usually an issue because the doctors go ahead and complete the miscarriage in short order, if it is deemed inevitable.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The mother became septicemic because infection spread from the uterus to the blood: a predictable and well-known complication when the water breaks early.

It may be well-known, but it’s hardly predictable. A woman’s water breaking most definitely does not automatically mean infection, and infection does not automatically mean septicemia.

This is your guess, based on what you want to believe. Undoubtedly everyone is entitled to his own guess and his own predilections. But some of the previous posters who went through it attest to the fact that it’s just a guess. I have known women who had amniotic fluid leaks, sometimes dramatic ones, who were nevertheless none the worse off for it. Apparently, it’s not at all uncommon. The article does not address true medical causation of the woman’s death. It simply blames the Catholic Church which, combined with the zero detail on medical causation, tells me its a propaganda piece designed to affect the legalization of abortion in Ireland. As such, it’s inexpressably cheap and low. But then, most anti-Catholic articles are.

 

[Gorgias]

michele1984:

They knew, at a time.when they could have saved the mother, that the baby was going to die. What kept them from saving her life was the law mandated from politicians that they could not remove the baby while it had a foetal heart beat.

That is what the media is telling you. What the rest of the story is…neither of us know.

Again, I can see how this could happen from a strictly medical viewpoint, without the legal restrictions imposed by Ireland’s laws.

Has anyone taken the time to listen to the audio interview that the husband gave to the Irish Times? (It’s on the page that was linked to, earlier in this thread.) We don’t know the facts from the hospital just yet, because they’re still investigating, but according to the husband, the timeline is something like this:

Sunday morning: she has back pains, goes to the hospital, they check her out (BP, fetal heart rate, uterine temp) and say that there’s no infection, everything’s going to be ok, and they send her home. Later, after an incident in the bathroom, she rushes back to the hospital. After a couple of doctors examined her, they determined that the baby wasn’t going to survive. They thought that this would happen in 4-5 hours, after which she could go home; they admitted her into the hospital. They began giving her antibiotics on Sunday evening.

On Monday morning, there’s still a fetal heartbeat. They ask what can be done (apparently, she asked “please induce me as soon as possible”). On Tuesday, they’re told that they can’t (abort?).

Tuesday evening, she begins shivering and vomiting; they give her paracetamol, take blood & urine samples.

On Wednesday, the doctor tells the husband that it could be a couple days before the blood & urine test results come back. The baby’s heartbeat stops at 2pm, and they immediately prep her for surgery, give her anesthesia, and successfully remove the baby and the placenta. At this point, hospital staff tell the husband that she’ll be OK in a few hours, but they want to keep her in the HDU for that time.

Wednesday evening, she takes a turn for the worse. Her husband is called back to the hospital, and she’s sedated, on antibiotics, and on a ventilator.

On Friday, her condition is deteriorating, but hospital staff tell her husband that she’ll recover. They determine that it’s an E coli infection, and attempt dialysis without success.

By Saturday, her organs were shutting down, and she passes away at 1pm.

So, not being an MD, I can’t draw any conclusions. It seems that they were treating her from the time they admitted her on Sunday evening. It also seems that she was physically OK Wednesday afternoon, following the operation to remove the baby and placenta, but that changed by Wednesday night.

Would this have happened if they’d taken action earlier? Was the woman asking for an abortion, or simply that they induce labor? Should the hospital have done anything more, before the woman exhibited symptoms of septicemia Tuesday night or Wednesday night? Could they have done anything more effective once she exhibited those symptoms?

 

[Ghosty]

Lack of understanding of what? I understand why they don’t understand, because I’ve never gotten a definitive answer (this has come up before, many times). May the infected or bleeding uterine contents be licitly delivered or no?

I’m not sure what you mean by “uterine contents”. A child who can’t likely survive outside the womb can be delivered in order to save the mother’s life, so long as attempts are made to care for the premature child. After all, it does the child no good if the mother dies while carrying them, so delivery is actually an attempt, however remote, at saving the child as well.

It would not be permitted to simply kill the child first and then deliver it, which is what an abortion would be at this stage.

Peace and God bless!

 

[St_Francis]

Has anyone taken the time to listen to the audio interview that the husband gave to the Irish Times? (It’s on the page that was linked to, earlier in this thread.) We don’t know the facts from the hospital just yet, because they’re still investigating, but according to the husband, the timeline is something like this:

Sunday morning: she has back pains, goes to the hospital, they check her out (BP, fetal heart rate, uterine temp) and say that there’s no infection, everything’s going to be ok, and they send her home. Later, after an incident in the bathroom, she rushes back to the hospital. After a couple of doctors examined her, they determined that the baby wasn’t going to survive. They thought that this would happen in 4-5 hours, after which she could go home; they admitted her into the hospital. They began giving her antibiotics on Sunday evening.

On Monday morning, there’s still a fetal heartbeat. They ask what can be done (apparently, she asked “please induce me as soon as possible”). On Tuesday, they’re told that they can’t (abort?).

Tuesday evening, she begins shivering and vomiting; they give her paracetamol, take blood & urine samples.

On Wednesday, the doctor tells the husband that it could be a couple days before the blood & urine test results come back. The baby’s heartbeat stops at 2pm, and they immediately prep her for surgery, give her anesthesia, and successfully remove the baby and the placenta. At this point, hospital staff tell the husband that she’ll be OK in a few hours, but they want to keep her in the HDU for that time.

Wednesday evening, she takes a turn for the worse. Her husband is called back to the hospital, and she’s sedated, on antibiotics, and on a ventilator.

On Friday, her condition is deteriorating, but hospital staff tell her husband that she’ll recover. They determine that it’s an E coli infection, and attempt dialysis without success.

By Saturday, her organs were shutting down, and she passes away at 1pm.

So, not being an MD, I can’t draw any conclusions. It seems that they were treating her from the time they admitted her on Sunday evening. It also seems that she was physically OK Wednesday afternoon, following the operation to remove the baby and placenta, but that changed by Wednesday night.

Would this have happened if they’d taken action earlier? Was the woman asking for an abortion, or simply that they induce labor? Should the hospital have done anything more, before the woman exhibited symptoms of septicemia Tuesday night or Wednesday night? Could they have done anything more effective once she exhibited those symptoms?

Thank you for this very clear timeline, which I imagine is more accurate than the newspaper article (which said, among other things, that the antibiotics were started much later).

 

[Helen31]

Wow! That’s so heartbreaking to read. The newpaper article makes it seem like the hospital did nothing for this poor woman. It just goes to show you that there’s alway a risk in pregnancy.
I pray for this woman’s soul, her unborn baby’s soul and for their surviving family memebers. May the Lord give them strength to endure such a tragic loss.

 

[St_Francis]

Has anyone taken the time to listen to the audio interview that the husband gave to the Irish Times? (It’s on the page that was linked to, earlier in this thread.) We don’t know the facts from the hospital just yet, because they’re still investigating, but according to the husband, the timeline is something like this:

Sunday morning: she has back pains, goes to the hospital, they check her out (BP, fetal heart rate, uterine temp) and say that there’s no infection, everything’s going to be ok, and they send her home. Later, after an incident in the bathroom, she rushes back to the hospital. After a couple of doctors examined her, they determined that the baby wasn’t going to survive. They thought that this would happen in 4-5 hours, after which she could go home; they admitted her into the hospital. They began giving her antibiotics on Sunday evening.

On Monday morning, there’s still a fetal heartbeat. They ask what can be done (apparently, she asked “please induce me as soon as possible”). On Tuesday, they’re told that they can’t (abort?).

Tuesday evening, she begins shivering and vomiting; they give her paracetamol, take blood & urine samples.

On Wednesday, the doctor tells the husband that it could be a couple days before the blood & urine test results come back. The baby’s heartbeat stops at 2pm, and they immediately prep her for surgery, give her anesthesia, and successfully remove the baby and the placenta. At this point, hospital staff tell the husband that she’ll be OK in a few hours, but they want to keep her in the HDU for that time.

Wednesday evening, she takes a turn for the worse. Her husband is called back to the hospital, and she’s sedated, on antibiotics, and on a ventilator.

On Friday, her condition is deteriorating, but hospital staff tell her husband that she’ll recover. They determine that it’s an E coli infection, and attempt dialysis without success.

By Saturday, her organs were shutting down, and she passes away at 1pm.

So, not being an MD, I can’t draw any conclusions. It seems that they were treating her from the time they admitted her on Sunday evening. It also seems that she was physically OK Wednesday afternoon, following the operation to remove the baby and placenta, but that changed by Wednesday night.

Would this have happened if they’d taken action earlier? Was the woman asking for an abortion, or simply that they induce labor? Should the hospital have done anything more, before the woman exhibited symptoms of septicemia Tuesday night or Wednesday night? Could they have done anything more effective once she exhibited those symptoms?

In between this timeline and this article, which points out that the principle of double effect rests also on the good to be obtained, an aspect for I must apologize for not seeing before as a factor in the doctors’ decisions:

–the object of the act itself must be morally good
–the evil end must be only foreseen, not intended (in other words, the evil act cannot be chosen as a means to a good end)
–the good end must be equal or in greater proportion to the foreseen evil effects

the situation is clarified.

As long as the mother in Ireland was in good health, the doctors could not hasten the labor or perform a C-section, because the good end was *not *equal to or greater than the foreseen evil effect as one cannot hasten death (here, the death of the baby) as a side effect without a proportionate reason. As long as the mother’s pain was well-controlled (since I now doubt the newspaper’s take on that as well) and her health not seriously threatened, then the 3rd aspect of the principle of double effect did not come into play.

Obviously we cannot know if her life would have been saved had action been taken earlier since the doctors thought she would recover just the day before she died.

 

[NovusAugustus]

The question here is whether it is established as medical certainty that delaying an inevitable misscarriage will cause a deadly infection. If it is will established as highly probable that waiting for an inevitable misscarriage with the womb opened will cause a critical infection, then it stands to reason that the child should be humanely removed and allowed to die outside the confines of the mother’s womb in order to protect her life. If it were possible to easily prevent a deadly infection by some means that I am ignorant of and allow the child to pass away in the intervening period, such a path would be preferable. But if no such insurance of the woman’s safety can be obtained, the child should be allowed to die outside the womb to insure the mother’s safety.

The whole situation is quite awful and I will pray for all those involved tonight.

 

[St_Francis]

Good to see serious discussion of this issue because I agree with the former poster: it is important to clarify. Apparently, in some countries, the understanding of biology that lawmakers have (and the sources of medical advice they seek) oversimplifies the whole issue of pregnancy complications and can place women’s lives at risk. There is no bright flashing line to say when a woman goes from sick to deathly sick, as I’ve experienced personally.

These decisions should be left to the judgment of doctors and ethics committees on a case by case basis without fear of criminal penalties. We are no longer in the days when an ectopic pregnancy had to rupture before treatment could be rendered, why should a woman have to suffer for days to allow her baby to die inside her? From what I have read, the doctors told the couple very early on that the baby would not survive and the risk of infection was not unknown. Would delivering the baby have been illicit? That’s what I’d like to know.

This article clarifies when hastening or inducing labor would be morally licit. It’s the same one I linked to in my previous post.

I had previously thought that hastening delivery would be licit under the principle of double effect, but had not taken that 3rd aspect of the principle into account.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

Gorgias: The timeline/story you present is terrifying. Stories/cases like this are what make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I’m in the ER.

So, not being an MD, I can’t draw any conclusions. It seems that they were treating her from the time they admitted her on Sunday evening. It also seems that she was physically OK Wednesday afternoon, following the operation to remove the baby and placenta, but that changed by Wednesday night.

Lay people often put a lot of stock on “she looked fine”. While I certainly do to, I’ve seen lots of people who I knew were quickly dieing “look fine”. In one of the news articles it quotes the hubby as stating she was “talking fine” as she came out of surgery. This makes good news because it is, indeed, shocking to many people to know that they, or their loved ones, can be talking and “looking fine”, and be dead in just a few hours. Unfortunately it isn’t so rare. (Well, kind of rare to be looking “fine” when you’re at death’s doorway…)

Would this have happened if they’d taken action earlier? Was the woman asking for an abortion, or simply that they induce labor? Should the hospital have done anything more, before the woman exhibited symptoms of septicemia Tuesday night or Wednesday night? Could they have done anything more effective once she exhibited those symptoms?

I don’t know. Perhaps an earlier procedure would have been worse (introducing even more pathogens into bloodstream). Perhaps they should NOT have done the procedure until the antibiotics had been given more time. Perhaps she should have had better prenatal care to catch a vaginal infection. Perhaps she should not have taken the last six courses of antibiotics she received for viral sinus infections (which set her up for ESBL E.coli).

Should the hospital have done anything more, before the woman exhibited sx of septicemia? In my humble opinion, no. Women have miscarriages all the time. You mostly watch and wait, and let her body do it’s thing. Sometimes you have to help her body out with medications or procedures, but those things carry risks, and I would much rather carefully watch a patient complete a miscarriage than perform an invasive procedure.

Could they have done anything more effective? Yes, but those “more effective” measures carry risks. Let’s put it this way: Would you now, because of this case, propose that any woman between 15-21 weeks gestation who presents with a impending miscarriage (open cervix, ruptured membranes) immediately get a D&C? Wouldn’t that make sense with what we think we know about this case? The answer is no, because those D&C’s carry a risk. Not only a risk of infection, but also a risk of future infertility.

The point I am trying to make here is that there are too many uncertainties, and too little hard information, being presented here for us to sit back and monday morning quarterback the medical staff for their decisions.

IF, and that is a big capital IF, the multiple investigations show that an earlier abortion would likely have prevented her death, AND the physicians didn’t perform the abortion because of the existing vagueness of the laws, then the laws should certainly be changed.

Oh, and “Amen” to what Don said. May the mom and baby rest with the Lord.

 

[St_Francis]

…IF, and that is a big capital IF, the multiple investigations show that an earlier abortion would likely have prevented her death, AND the physicians didn’t perform the abortion because of the existing vagueness of the laws, then the laws should certainly be changed.

I appreciate your clarifying so much. it is so easy for us non-medical people to think that doctors can solve every problem…

I wanted to ask about your use of the word abortion above: do you actually mean the sort of procedure that women get when they procure an abortion? I know that medical people use the word differently than do lay people…

Oh, and “Amen” to what Don said. May the mom and baby rest with the Lord.

May they both rest in peace.

 

[littlechicken]

news.yahoo.com/ireland-probes-death-ill-abortion-seeker-115438751.html

I am sorry if this is in the wrong place, or if a thread has already been started on it. Feel free to modify or do whatever is necessary.
In the article it states the woman would not have died if they had performed an abortion. My feeling is that there is more to the story than what anyone is saying. But what if it is the whole truth?
And how do we go about defending this?
Thanks all.
For prayers, and for being here.

Sorry, I just found the other thread on this. Thought I could delete this one, but alas…