Woman 'denied a termination' dies in hospital

[pepipop]

You bring up a separate and entirely different issue with the case of X. First, *nothing *justifies an actual abortion. Second, it is absurd to list risk of suicide as a risk to the mother’s life. What should be done in this case is not to kill the baby, but to care for the mother and treat her suicidal tendencies. Otherwise, any woman could claim that she was suicidal and thus be eligible for an abortion, right?

WRT the law in Ireland and the case of this woman, yes, the law should be clarified. However, it does seem that the doctors acted approriately, since they did not at any point think that the mother’s life was at risk, as shown by the fact that they thought she would recover from the infection *after *the pregnancy had ended.

The problem is that the doctors can only make a descision based on the information they have at hand at the time. If the doctors had been able to forsee the future, then they would have acted differently, but they cannot forsee the future. We must accept the fact that human limitations sometimes means that outcomes are not what we would wish.

I totally agree with everything you have posted. Many Irish women called a talk radio show today with similar experiences and all were treated differently, but with total compassion and good medical care. One lady was offered a D and C due to extensive bleeding, but she did not wish to undergo it because the fetal heartbeat was still beating. She was advised by the Doctor that she was putting herself at risk and by association the fetus, as it was not viable at 16 weeks and that they both could die.

Each situation is different and I am sure the doctors did what was appropriate at the time. Savita’s husband said on a live interview, yesterday that his wife was totally well, each day, until she came out of theatre and we can only assume Savita was blood tested throughout her stay in the hospital.

 

[PaulfromIowa]

The child was not going to live in any circumstances. She died after three days of excruciating pain.

Have you noticed how there are NO details in this story? Like exactly how killing the child would have cured the mother’s infection? Was the mother given antibiotics, the usual treatment for infection?

I find what these doctors to did to be extremely immoral and a woman died a painful death for absolutely no reason.

FYI, I am pro-life.

Zach

If you are prolife, why do you believe pro-abort sources and express such hate towards pro-life people?

 

[R_C]

If the condition is septicemia, then neither labor nor abortion corrects the condition…!

Yes.

People keep arguing in favor of having murdered the unborn baby as if that would have somewhat prevented the septicemia, and we just don’t know that…we don’t. And the ends (saving the mother’s life or sparing her agonizing pain) can never justify the means (murdering the 17-week-old unborn child), regardless of the fact that the doctors considered he was not going to survive.

I’d like to bring things into a more clear perspective, into a more Christian, or at least more human, perspective.

Consider why the Red Cross came to be.

The Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino, which left 40,000 soldiers dead or wounded…the wounded were left on the ground to die, or perhaps received a merciful shot to end their agony…he was shocked. With some effort and by God’s grace, the Red Cross came to be.

What do you think is the proper, human way of dealing with a wounded soldier that is anyways going to die: to leave Him on the ground without any treatment, to kill him in cold blood, or to provide medical attention? And did the Red Cross people not risk their life (and sometimes get wounded or die) in order to help the wounded ones?

Sure, the world often treats an unborn child as a “thing”, not as a human being, thus hardly will they consider that the unborn, even if bound to die, deserves not to be murdered in cold blood. You don’t need to be a Catholic to understand that it is inhuman and barbaric to act in a different way. I don’t understand how can people not see this.

 

[tomarin]

I don’t know much about this story, but if the baby was old enough, couldn’t they have just done an emergency c-section? Just saying…

I don’t think the baby was old enough (17 weeks if I recall correctly) to be expected to survive outside the womb.

 

[Chrish1975]

Here is an article about a woman in Ireland who was refused an abortion, and died because of it: guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/14/savita-halappanavar-medically-unnecessary-death

Essentially what the article says is that this woman was miscarrying her child, and it was clear that this was happening. The child was not going to live in any circumstances. She died after three days of excruciating pain. Does the Church make an exception in this case? I find what these doctors to did to be extremely immoral and a woman died a painful death for absolutely no reason.

FYI, I am pro-life.

Zach

According to the Church there is no exception, but what would be needed to change is the Ireland civil law to allow abortion if the life of the mother is in danger.

Having a baby is a dangerous thing for a woman and there is no guarantee that if she would of had an abortion she would have lived also.

 

[_Abyssinia]

HLI Statement on the Death of Savita Halappanavar

The following is a statement from Father Shenan J. Boquet, president of Human Life International, on the death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman who was allegedly refused

an abortion from a Catholic hospital in Ireland:

“The staff and pro-life missionaries of Human Life International join those mourning the death of Savita. We pray that God have mercy on her soul and that He will bring peace and healing to her family and friends who have lost a loved one.

“But we categorically reject the pro-abortion activist and media effort to use her death for their own cause when very few facts are known about the decisions regarding her treatment. We join Irish Health Minister James Reilly in appealing for people to await the outcome of investigations by the coroner, the Hospital and Health Service Executive. And it needs to be pointed out that according to Mr. Reilly, there is no evidence that a Catholic ethos prevented responsible treatment of Savita despite some news reports demonizing the Catholic Church’s position on abortion as the sole reason for Savita’s tragic death.

“The Church’s position in these difficult cases is always to save both patients – both mother and child. The description of the hospital’s response to Savita’s condition sounds, at best, incomplete, and at worst, a complete misrepresentation of the response of a hospital that has an exemplary record for maternal health.

“We must also ask why it is not time for a national conversation about abortion when a woman dies from having an abortion. In the U.S., it is well known that a young woman named Tonya Reaves died this past July from a botched abortion at a Chicago Planned Parenthood, yet somehow her death did not merit international attention and condemnation despite reports of staggering negligence on the part of Planned Parenthood leading to her death. And yet we are led to believe with this deluge of press surrounding the death of Savita, and with obviously incomplete information, that a Catholic hospital maliciously caused the death of a young mother by not treating her.

“This is activism masquerading as compassion and moral outrage. Let us find out what the hospital actually offered for treatment, how things actually proceeded, then let’s make our judgment as to the cause of this tragic death. But if we are actually concerned about women’s health, we must be just as outraged by those many women harmed or killed every week through legal and illegal abortion around the world. Until then, with the Catholic Church, we insist that medical professionals do everything they can to save both mother and child in these difficult situations. Abortion always takes one life and harms another. It saves no one, and it divides communities and nations, as we see again in this tragic episode.”

Ireland Abortion Supporters Shouldn’t Exploit Savita’s Death

 

[St_Francis]

St Francis

They’re not morally neutral in that the procedures are the direct cause of the death of the fetus.

My daughter went through it and I consulted Priest for Life, and that’s what they told me.

Yes, this is true, but that is when the action is put into a context. If the actions taken are wrt to a baby which is more fully developed, say, 35 weeks, then the actions would have no evil attached to them, right? It is only when the action is put into a specific context that one can examine the good or evil resulting from the action.

Whereas a procured abortion, where the living baby is *directly *attacked for the purpose of causing its death, is *intrinsically *evil, the action in and of itself contains the evil.

But that’s a tap dance around what’s actually taking place, when they know that the C-Section or inducing labor will undoubtedly kill the fetus.

Right, which is why one cannot simply perform this procedure willy-nilly, but only as a treatment to a mother in grave danger.

Well, the incident at St Joseph’s Hospital in Arizona contradicts your statement, where the Bishop said that all involved were excommunicated.

And this was, as someone else mentioned, a D&C performed when the baby was still alive, with the intention of killing the baby. The situations are not at all comparable.

 

[R_C]

According to the Church there is no exception, but what would be needed to change is the Ireland civil law to allow abortion if the life of the mother is in danger.

So we should make provisions for murder? Interesting. Can you expand more on who will draw the arbitrary line between saving a life and taking a life, and based on what solid guidelines?

 

[Gorgias]

Right, which is why one cannot simply perform this procedure willy-nilly, but only as a treatment to a mother in grave danger.

Remember, though – it’s not just that there must be “grave danger”: double effect would require that there be no other possible treatment. Given that we haven’t heard the full story, we can’t say that this is the case at all. At the very least, expectant therapy along with the administration of antibiotics seems to be a standard approach in this situation (with the caveat, again, that we don’t know all the facts of the situation)…!

 

[St_Francis]

Umm, squeezing a gun’s trigger is a morally neutral action in and of itself, too. But, squeezing a trigger when the barrel is pointed at a person – well, that’s a whole 'nother story.

In this case, the action isn’t “delivering a baby”, it’s “delivering a baby who has no viability outside the womb”. That does not seem like a ‘morally neutral act’!

Is the removal of the baby from the womb ‘the means by which the mother’s life is saved’, though? If the condition is septicemia, then neither labor nor abortion corrects the condition…!

This is why the doctors did not hasten her delivery.

The infection seems to have occurred as a result of her being in a prolonged labor. The treatment for prolonged labor is to hasten delivery, but was not administered in this case *because *it did not seem at any point to be proportionate to what was happening with the mother.

Because the prolonged labor causes an avenue for germs to enter in a dangerous way, it might be that hastening delivery might in some cases be lfe-saving, and I have also read that sometimes removal of the uterus, if it is infected, is also a treatment.

(You do realize that I am arguing that the doctors acted correctly?)

 

[St_Francis]

Yes, I was using lay terms, and meant the abortive procedure.

Well, that would have been altogether wrong.

 

[Angelsflight]

Common sense always has to be applied. The child’s life is dependent on the mother’s life. if the mother’s life will end because of the pregnancy, then child’s life is unsavable therefore you salvage what you can, which is the mother’s life.

Remember 9/11? If you could have prevented one of those planes from hitting the WTC by shooting it down, would you? Would it be an intrinsic evil? It’s the same principle.

Yes!! I totally agree with this.

 

[seekerz]

If the problem faced by the patient was Irish Law, then they could have shifted treatment to a neighbouring country. It is unfair to criticize the Law of a democratic country.

I’m not sure if the problem was the law or not. In other countries where abortion is illegal in all cases, you hear the same arguments every time a woman dies: the doctors did not understand that the law allowed her life to be saved, the doctors did not provide proper treatment, the doctors do not understand the moral principles of the Church…seems like doc are damned if they do and equally damned if they don’t.

Which is why I DO NOT want any half-thought out personhood laws determining what decisions my doctor can take in life-threatening situations. They make the laws, but then refuse to take responsibility for the consequences. If they believe women should die to allow their babies to die naturally, what’s the problem in owning that?

 

[pepipop]

It is on our evening news here, at the moment. It is international news and the Indian government are looking closely at how Ireland deal with this. It is being touted that Savita died because she was refused an abortion and was anti-humanitarian.

 

[R_C]

Originally Posted by Cbus
Common sense always has to be applied. The child’s life is dependent on the mother’s life. if the mother’s life will end because of the pregnancy, then child’s life is unsavable therefore you salvage what you can, which is the mother’s life.

Remember 9/11? If you could have prevented one of those planes from hitting the WTC by shooting it down, would you? Would it be an intrinsic evil? It’s the same principle.

This is nonsense. You do not murder in order to stop murder. You do not do evil in order to stop evil.

“The child’s life is unsavable therefore you salvage what you can”, is that how you circumvent the fact that this “salvage” means killing a living human being? Sure, unborn and perhaps doomed to die, but still a living human being.

 

[seekerz]

The “standard of care” is a term that can only be defined when you have the complete picture, which we don’t have. What is her past medical history? What are her allergies? What were her actual vitals? What medications was she on?

As I have posted before. A woman presenting with imminent miscarriage at 17 weeks (open os with fluid) is often managed expectantly (ie: closely watched). At what point do you move from watching to helping her deliver (medicinally or procedurally) varies greatly with the circumstances. Likewise, what you do when see signs of infection varies greatly as well.

We just don’t have enough information to be able to define what the “standard of care” will be. Unfortunately this is all-to-often left up to lawyers, who I’m sure are lining up to get rich off of this.

To my knowledge, there is not much ‘variety’ in the standard practice when there are signs of an infected pregnancy, regardless of any of the other factors you mention. An infected pregnancy with a non-viable baby will not “uninfect” itself, antibiotics or no antibiotics. It is either licit to hasten delivery or it is not. In my mind, that is the only answer on which clarity is lacking.

 

[seekerz]

This is nonsense. You do not murder in order to stop murder. You do not do evil in order to stop evil.

“The child’s life is unsavable therefore you salvage what you can”, is that how you circumvent the fact that this “salvage” means killing a living human being? Sure, unborn and perhaps doomed to die, but still a living human being.

If a non-viable baby is delivered by means of drugs, is that murder? Our treatment of ectopic pregnancies would suggest, not necessarily.

 

[seekerz]

This is why the doctors did not hasten her delivery.

The infection seems to have occurred as a result of her being in a prolonged labor. The treatment for prolonged labor is to hasten delivery, but was not administered in this case *because *it did not seem at any point to be proportionate to what was happening with the mother.

I would like to zone in on that last statement. It is established knowledge that infection complicating a prolonged labor can cause death, just like uncontrolled bleeding from an untreated wound can. Do docs have to wait before the woman is dying before their eyes to intervene? What if the process is unstoppable then? That seems to me like saying a mom is justified in putting her baby in the front passenger seat with no car seat because there was no accident in progress at the time. We know what can be the outcome of an infected miscarriage based on years of experience.

 

[R_C]

If a non-viable baby is delivered by means of drugs, is that murder? Our treatment of ectopic pregnancies would suggest, not necessarily.

I am no expert on this. And I presume that people with expertise and a well-formed conscience can discern the intricacies of these situations. I just do not like “generic” statements. Huge difference between your post and the one I was commenting on.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

To my knowledge, there is not much ‘variety’ in the standard practice when there are signs of an infected pregnancy, regardless of any of the other factors you mention. An infected pregnancy with a non-viable baby will not “uninfect” itself, antibiotics or no antibiotics. It is either licit to hasten delivery or it is not. In my mind, that is the only answer on which clarity is lacking.

I’ll give you some hypothetical “variety”.

Mom comes in with imminent abortion (open os, fluid and/or POC discharge). Simple textbook answer is you manage expectantly.

Add some variety: Mom comes in with imminent abortion and is febrile. Whoa…gotta ask more questions. Uterine tenderness? Other symptoms (GI, Resp, Neuro, etc)? How long has she been ill?? You still might manage expectantly, or you may want to speed up the abortion medically, or you may have to do a hysterectomy.

Once you move away from the “standard” textbook patient you encounter LOTS of variety in the standard practice.

Each patient is different, and none of them can be found in a standard textbook.