Mumsnet Talk

What was done to that woman was pure evil.

Very glad to hear it. Hope the politicians and medical profession were listening.

An estimated 20,000 people marched through Dublin this afternoon in protest.

verylittlecarrot you're right not to be repentant, you were right. I'm amazed I wasn't deleted too, given my response to your deleted post.

madwoman I just hope Savita's husband doesn't feel he could have saved his wife if he had screamed the place down .

And the original Hippocratic Oath dates back to before Christianity, medicine has moved on since then. The oath is not relevant in and of itself. The principle of medical practice should be 'First do no harm'. Going by that principle, the doctors treating Savita failed dismally in their duty of care.

Belfast Telegraph tonight has an interview with a woman who was in a very similar situation in the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1990 and only survived because her husband put up a massive fight for medical staff to induce. Staff at the time said they could not legally authorise an abortion even though there was no chance for the baby at 17 to 19 weeks. She was showing signs of infection and only after her husband brought in their 2 year old SN child and basically screamed the place down that this child needed his mother was she given treatment. She just about made it.

I see I have had my first post deletion on five years of mumsnet! Given the circumstances though, I am unrepentant.

"I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy"

But still - offering treatment to a woman who is having a miscarriage which can't be prevented and will result in a baby which will not be able to survive, is not the the same as what most of us think of as an abortion.

I didn't read it all. I will do now though.

Juule, I have just learned from that page that the Hippocratic oath contained the line
"I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy"

I know Wikipedia not always reliable bit apparantly there is no legal requirement to swear the Hippocratic Oath.
"While there is currently no legal obligation for medical students to swear an oath upon graduating"
From here

I expect that incompetence will be at the root of this.

Also a clash of cultures. Asking for an abortion might have made inadequate staff dig their heels in. Insisting on a second opinion, that 'something' be done may have worked. Or maybe not.

She was a dentist, she understood about infection

I think the main issue here is that the doctors failed in their duty of care. However, what motivated their decision-making?

I would hope that the Hippocratic Oath & professional standards of practice would guide practice, rather than religious/personal ideology.

Surely the medical staff would have been equally scared about being sued for failure to intervene, as much as lack of intervention?

I cannot understand (as a healthcare professional myself) how the medical staff could possibly justify their inaction, within the context of their code of conduct?

Or were they more motivated by fear of prosecution for ending the pregnancy?

Bally crappy state of affairs where religion has apparently spread its influence to a profession that world-wide is seen as one motivated by a deep rooted desire to help human beings...

Why haven't the irish doctors been shouting about this from the roof tops?

Good point re. sanctity of life only applying when they want to oppress and kill women. Not when it's war. And not when it's a murderer who wants the services of a priest either.

I hope the doctors ARE sued - by Savita's husband and family. I hope he sues their arses off, I hope those weaselly evil toerags are bankrupted. Maybe then Irish doctors will realise they can't save their own skins by killing pregnant women.

Yes I agree, they don't actually believe in the sanctity of life as such, because they suspend that doctrine every time their support is needed for a war.

I'd like to know what the actual theological approach is to human life now, thinking about it. There used to be the doctrine of the just war, I don't know if it's still doctrine. Any theologians about?

Ilovemydog, let me just say again that i had two infections, both neglected by docs. I think this is sadly pretty commonplace.

She used to be my teacher too so my opinion of her isn't purely based on her columns.

<waves at the Dominicans>

crookedcrock I mean that having Breda O'Brien and John Waters both writing for the Irish Times is overkill. The woman is to the right of the far right. I can't believe the IT continue to give her a weekly platform for her extreme views. But that goes along with the anti abortion bias throughout all Irish media.

Two small points about double standards:

Following on from Squoosh's post, I have been told that when some nuns were raped (in Nigeria, I think) they were allowed abortions; one rule for nuns and another for 9-year-old girls, apparently!

The anti-abortion people tend to base their position on "the sanctity of life", but strangely, they don't often identify as pacifists! And none of the mainstream churches have ever opposed war as such, in spite of the fact that wars undeniably kill people!

So it looks as if the "sanctity of life" argument is just a smokescreen for something else, and I suspect that something is patriarchal power. War is a men's thing, after all, so of course, different rules apply!

Maybe it's time to join the Quakers!

Squoosh, re Breda O'Brien, whatever your views on her might be and many will disagree with your characterisation of her, what do you mean by the phrase "not in Ireland though"? Is she not entitled to express her "extremely conservative, right wing Christian" views?

I dunno, I just think on the whole doctors are fairly intelligent, well-educated people and if you work in the field of obstetrics in Ireland, surely you can't be unaware of the very tenuous position the Irish govt is in vis the EU and its demand that Ireland clarify its abortion law?

Unless the Irish govt wants an all-out collision with the EU there's no way it would want to take any case like this one to court in the event of abortion taking place to save a mother's life - no way would it go on the offensive because it was lying low on the issue of abortion law clarification.

How can a doctor in the field not have known this? How could there have been anything like a reasonable fear of court action?

Being sued may apply in the general case, although I think it's a bit of an excuse myself - however, I can't see that it would have been an issue here.

(I say I think it's a bit of an excuse - my grandmother died, we felt, after negligent treatment. We didn't sue in the end; we weren't interested in money, but we wanted to try to make sure that someone else didn't suffer. So it came down to poor communication - which is what I suspect is behind a lot of cases, and may even be partly to blame in Savita's case.)

I think it's the other way round: medical staff might have got so caught up in the 'Am I procuring a miscarriage here, thereby leaving me open to prosecution?' that they did not see that there was no case to answer. A miscarriage was in progress which they had to manage; and by all accounts manage more actively than they did.

Having said that, more and more drs are considering how vulnerable they are to being sued and are chosing their specialties accordingly. Because childbirth is such a minefield, there is a growing trend, certainly in the States, to do Gynaecology only and no obstetrics. That of course has nothing to do with this case.

Agree with KRITIQ but OMG what sort of parallel universe are we in whereby a doctor even contemplates medical negligence rather than saving the life in front of them?

KRITIQ, that sums it up excactly and is entirely my position.