Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Irish women wrongly told they miscarried

Imagine you're a woman who's gotten pregnant and later told you've had a miscarriage -- only to find out after a D and C that in fact your unborn child was still healthy and viable.   Apparently that's what's happened in Ireland at at least one hospital -- over and over again -- and perhaps many more health care facilities.   While Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe to outlaw abortions in its constitution (theoretically at least, perhaps about 6000 procedures still happen there every year) it has, unlike some truly draconian countries, attempted to provide realistic alternatives for women.

And the official ban certainly hasn't stopped Irish women from travelling to the UK where of course the procedure is legal (and about 10,000 do so annually despite denials from the British NHS that it's that high).

But as providers of front line health care, hospitals owe it to their patients to be truthful.   If this ultrasound or sonogram was malfunctioning then the hospital should have told their patients the truth.   If a woman received a "life saving" abortion for the wrong reasons, then it would be just as wrong as forcing a woman to become pregnant against her will several times over (as was the case in Ceauşescu's Romania).   Heads need to roll in this one -- professionally, that is.    It's despicable to say the least.

Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.

1 comment:

deBeauxOs said...

Don't you think that you left out an important piece of information?

Those medical interventions were based on readings from sonograms that were malfunctioning.

This would be similar to mastectomies performed after incorrect biopsies declared that women had breast cancer.

These women wanted to carry their pregnancy to term, wanted to give life and were told that their fetus had no heartbeat. Some did not believe the medical opinions and demanded further tests, only to have their intuition confirmed that the fetus was indeed still viable.

When I first read your blogpost, I got the impression that the medical authorities were aborting these women against their will. Fortunately I checked the article that your had linked to.