Threats to the lives of women do not need to be imminent for doctors to take necessary steps to protect them, a leading obstetrician has said.
Dr Mary Holohan, a consultant obstetrician in Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital has previously taken issue with the “false allegation” that doctors are prevented from treating seriously ill pregnant women, and said her concerns about this are shared by many other doctors. Her comments come against a background of claims that doctors cannot act to help women unless they are dying before them.
In a letter to The Irish Independent, Dr Holohan says: “The risk to women’s lives does not have to be imminent for doctors to take all necessary steps to protect women’s lives and health. The current law and guidelines are very clear in this regard.”
She detailed how she had never felt limited in her care for pregnant patients with a range of illnesses, including cancer and sepsis, and rejected claims by Dr Peter Boylan that women have died because of the Eighth Amendment.
Lamenting how there appears to be a campaign strategy to create a popular impression that mothers’ medical needs require the removal of the amendment, she concluded “as persons trusted by the public to give expert advice and opinion, doctors should avoid giving inaccurate or misleading information whether to advance personal, political or philosophical views or not”.