the case of savita- i am a bit confused

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NOAH

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Am I right that this case only came to light as a result of a tipp off and otherwise would not see the light of day. Am I right in that both wife and husband were fully aware that a termination was vital to save Savita?

And then once hospital knew it was not in their remit to do that not transfer savita to UK?

It just does not make sense.

Can someone explain how the medical profession could just stand there and let a person die?

Its a bit like the war crimes defence, I was only doing what I was told.

As for the enquiry and the make up of its members!!!
 
The husband has taken the decision to not co-operate with the enquiry. Who could blame him.
 
In hindsight, an earlier termination of the pregnancy might have saved Savita but I don’t believe it was clear to anyone at the time that her life was at risk – she even had a friend who was a doctor at the hospital who visited her every day – I don’t think anyone stood by as an obviously dying woman slipped away in front of them. The ‘facts’ such as they are reported are:
Sunday 21st October went into hospital with back pain, examined and found to be fully dilated and leaking amniotic fluid – informed that this was incompatible with a continuing pregnancy and that there was no hope of saving the foetus even though the heartbeat was still present.
Monday 22nd: requested a termination as the baby was not going to survive; told no because there was still a heartbeat
Tuesday 23rd AM: in pain, again requested a termination, refused as there was still a heartbeat
Tuesday PM: became very unwell, still in pain
Wednesday AM: again asked for termination, again told no as there was a heartbeat still present
Wednesday lunchtime: foetal heartbeat stopped, taken immediately to theatre for removal of dead foetus
Wednesday PM: condition worsened - taken to intensive care
Saturday PM: died in intensive care

So, the tragedy is that she was not unwell enough on Monday-Wednesday morning for her life to be considered at risk. The increased risk of infection from a fully dilated cervix and leaking uterus was not sufficient grounds to agree to the request for termination of a still live but doomed foetus. I’m sure the hospital has made the same decision in 100s, probably 1000s of similar circumstances over the years without patients dying so the risk of anything going horribly wrong was very small. In my view, once the foetus is no longer viable, the mother’s life, health and mental being should assume absolute 100% priority.
 
thank you orka, but why could they not move her to UK thats the bit I cant get a handle on, ie galway airport etc. What stopped them? the patient was indian not irish, had requested termination could have signed a piece of paper etc.

I must admit I am stunned, you read of cases where people are flown to UK usa etc for special care but not this one. And it only became public after a tipp off.

Is ireland also breaking some european law by this trenchant approach. I would equate to, if an Irish person was ill in a country that refused a blood transfusion say, we would all be up in arms.

I cant see why everyone is going off on this road re abortion.
 
NOAH said:
but why could they not move her to UK thats the bit I cant get a handle on,
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But when would anyone have thought they needed to move her? She didn't appear to be at risk of death on Monday, Tuesday, into Wednesday morning; lots of women go through the same process (wait it out until the heartbeat stops) and they are fine. So why go to the extreme of travel (and btw, how? no airline would take a miscarrying woman... so air ambulance? who would pay? not a medical emergency)? By the time her life WAS obviously at risk, the foetus had been removed so no point in going to the UK then.
 
Ah it gets clearer. But I bet if the patient knew the law they would have made arrangements. It was the 22nd they requested. And this is the bit that mystifies me. Why ask for termination twice? Is it not obvious it would be refused? And the patient must have been aware of the risk, otherwise why keep on asking for a termination?

I dont think they were asking, they were begging.

What ever procedure they were following in that hospital it was not medical. In the UK termination would have been granted on the Monday 22nd.

Thanks for explanation. What will the enquiry achieve? And could the patient have been moved to the north ie Derry? by car.

I think it was a case of desperate situations call for desperate measures.

And I noticed the 3 from Galway have been removed from the enquiry panel but only after protest.

I think there is more to this than meets the eye. I saw a bit of frontline last night and one woman wko was on there was interviewed had gone through same process but survived. Was asked should they have terminated? Answer = yes.
 

Please note I put in the above comments into Noah's post because our personal opinions and conjecture matter not to any outcome. I realize my input could have been done better, but my knowledge of PCs is pretty limited. Please note:- No offence meant to Noah. And thanks Orca for the explanation, I was getting a bit confused also.
 
Whilst there is a terrible tragedy surrounding this, I feel the facts have to be ascertained first.

There are in fact more cases about blood transfusions, children and Jehovah Witnesses and the whole issue of parental consent. Whats interesting is that the cases to date are such that the Courts have overidden parental consent (which was withheld) and ordered the transfusions against the parents wishes as otherwise the child would have died.

The referendum has been passed and now the childs view needs to be taken into consideration.

As this neatly side steps the health or life to the mother ask yourselves what you would do in each of the two circumstances:

(A) Child needs a lifesaving blood transfusion. Parents refuse consent. Child refuses to give consent. - Do you go ahead or not with transfusion. Going ahead means you trample all over their constitutional rights.

(B) Same as above except child gives consent and parents don't.

And by the way in (A) you are the one to lock the childs room so they can die in peace.
 
WizardDr said:
As this neatly side steps the health or life to the mother ask yourselves what you would do in each of the two circumstances:
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Maybe Im just being enormously thick, but I dont see the relevance of the thought experiment. A 17 week old foetus is not a child.
 
@truthseeker well I won't confirm your own opinion.

Firstly there have been more court cases on the matter than the unfortunate circumstances we have here. Secondly the referendum change may see a big problem with the next case - type (A) and I thought (foolishly) that addressing issues that are coming down the tracks would be useful.

In the X case the problem is that the opinion on whether X would or would not commit suicide was an expert opinion - and some are of the view that this particular opinion should not have been given the weight that it was.

If the matter were settled - then why did the Bar Entrance Exam have almost an exact scenario on the Constitutional paper in 2012? Because its not settled thats why.

The view could be that - and I dont know the figures - that after a certain period of time a foetus will result in a live birth. To give it a legal flavour - 'a virtual certainty' and BUT FOR the time lapse thats the only reason you are not dealing with a child. The next question then is whats the risk to the Mother?

I am clear that if it were my Wife and if I was clear the foetus was not going to live, and my Wife was at risk, I would have sought an injunction in Justice Hogans house - just like the blood transfusions cases - and I am also clear - if the facts were that the foetus was not going to live and my Wife was at risk of dying - he would probably have granted the injunction. And if the Hospital to undertake the operation , he would have ordered in Doctors that would.

However, despite the baying of the media this is one where cold logical analysis is needed, which is absent the current 'debate'. I don't know what the medical view(s) are. What I can say if my Wife died and I believed the Hospital did not act - I would sue them for negligence - and that would be the 'tribunal' needed.

So I am not on any particular side - I just think this is being hijacked to deal with social abortion as opposed to what is actually needed. I simply don't buy the suicide argument. At the same time I have no doubts if the Mothers life is at risk.
 
I think the point of the experiment is how do you weigh the rights of people with life & death decisions.

My own view is that if you're in a hospital you are there to be helped and made better and obviously kept alive - this is irrespective of your wishes or those of your guardians. This assumes you have a prospect of meaningful life, as opposed to being in a permanent vegitative state (re terminally ill, see below), i.e. I think there are times to switch off the machine, again, sadly, irrespective of the wishes of the family (this may seem heartless, but in theory there could be wards full of people hooked up to machines with no prospect of recover but kept there by family praying for a miracle - recent incidents notwithstanding I think at some point you need to take heed of medical advice, perhaps you give a week or two for people to come to terms with it or to allow for the miracle but at some stage it makes sense to let go).

If you dont want treatment dont present for care (medical personnel have enough to be doing without wasting their time on nonsense like no blood transfusion), if you happen to be brought there by ambulance or whatever then you will be given appropriate care and discharged, what you do when you leave the hospital (in good health hopefully) is your own business, but dont expect to be let die by people who could save you.

While we're at it (sure lets get all medical dilemmas out there), I do believe that euthenasia (sp?) is morally acceptable - the key difference from the "no transfusions" brigade is that in this case you are terminally ill, you will die shortly without having recovered any quality of life, you have the mental capacity to make a decision, then fair enough, I dont see any benefit in being made suffer to the bitter end - you wouldnt let an animal suffer into death (ok you can pump someone full of drugs and arguably numb the pain but to what end?), I'd rather die without having weeks or months of twilight.
 
Betsy Og said:
I think the point of the experiment is how do you weigh the rights of people with life & death decisions.
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Maybe so, but given that the thought experiment refers to a child and the Savita case is about a 17 week old foetus the analogy doesnt really make any sense.

Just on euthanasia Betsy Og, not only do I think its morally acceptable, I believe it is immoral to refuse it. If I want to take my own life that is my own decision. Making someone suffer is not morally acceptable imo.

It would be nice if this country would allow people to take some personal moral responsibility.
 
Lets be clear.

If you are 18+ you can refuse treatment and die if thats what you want.

The switching off of life support has long been decided.

The trouble is 'assisted' death - and that means you asking me to do X. If I do that, its currently murder, but if you refuse the treatment thats different.

What I am asking is - decide the minor child issue on blood transfusions, as its going to arise.

The issue about the foetus - side stepping morality and any other pointless debate is this - after a certain period of time the foetus (I dont know when it is exactly) will result in a live birth. So its a temporal issue. Hence the life of the unborn should have trumped a suicide potential anyday.

I believe any advices taken by anyone will suggest that the X Case might be decided differently today because the suicide risk is highly subjective. The time factor from now to a live birth is objective.
 
I was having some difficulty following your argument, until you used the words "social abortion", then I understood where you were coming from, despite your claim not to be "on any particular side".

Leaving aside the moral issues, and especially all this obfuscation about blood transfusions and euthanasia, would you say it's the case that legislatures in all the other jurisdictions in which this tragedy would not have been allowed to unfold in the way it did here are simply more naïve or less far-sighted than our own?

And there was me thinking that the failure to legislate for the X case, twenty years on, was a matter of political cowardice and continued deference to Church teaching.
 
WizardDr said:
Lets be clear.
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I do wish you would!


Its a naive simplification to assume that a foetus will result in a live birth and the only issue is temporal.
 
@truthseeker
@DrMoriarty

I used the term social abortion as distinct from one where the life of the Mother is at risk. I suppose 'right to choose' might be a more soothing description where the unborn loses but the Mother's life is not at risk. You could of course go further and take the Dworkin view that the foetus has no existence separate to that of the Mother etc.

The common law - for example Torts - goes along quite well without legislation.

On a constitutional basis there is apparently the life of the Mother and the Unborn to be considered.

So let the two of you spell out how you balance this right?

And are you saying the risk of suicide trumps the unborn in all cases?

I believe that any opinion being sought today will bear out the problem with the X case and the suicide risk.

Where the Mothers life is not at risk - it is difficult to see from the jurisprudednce how an abortion would be allowed.

Some times these difficulties are better dealt with by breaking the problem down. Highlighting the blood transfusion case brought it down to one life - the child. I notice of course apart from criticism in abundance - neither of you two have said what you would do.
 
WizardDr said:
So let the two of you spell out how you balance this right?
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The mothers right to choose what happens to her own body trumps everything imo. Im happy for doctors or scientists to set a limit on the number of weeks.

Currently thats how it works anyhow - women who want an abortion take a flight to the UK. If the UK wasnt available then at least some of these women would resort to inserting knitting needles into themselves, or engaging the services of criminal abortionists, resulting in a a double whammy of the loss of the unborn child AND many mothers to infections.

Legalisation of abortion does not increase the number of abortions in a society. So why try to paper over the cracks of reality. It happens anyway, lets make it safe for the women who choose it.
 
You didn't answer my question, WizardDr, but I'll answer yours, briefly.

I personally believe that access to safe (i.e. until 12 weeks' gestation), legal abortion is the right of any woman.

I reject utterly the notion that any religion should have its dogma enshrined in civil law, least of all when it comes to matters of the right to life. You are welcome to believe what you like, but you have no right to legally impose your morality on others, whether or not they are citizens of the State or followers of your religion.

I also believe — again, a strictly personal view — that to continue with the kind of moral posturing which would prefer to continue to turn a blind eye to 6,000+ Irish women "taking the boat" every year, so that we can say there's no abortion in Ireland, is nothing short of rank hypocrisy.
 
the most irritating part is to hear all those politicians withering on and trying to score points.

and the last post sums it up exactly, we are a backward country with useless politicians, not much of a judiciary, and it is only publicising cases like savita will force us to grow up and act with proper dignity.
 
and leper when we get the result of the enquiry, if ever, I hope you will come back and amend my post to read FACT as and where appropriate. Its the frontline tonight.
 
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