David QuinnWhere are the doctors to defend the principle of ‘do no harm’, asks David Quinn
On Claire Byrne Live on Monday of last week, Liz McDermott of ‘One Day More’, a support group for parents whose unborn children were diagnosed with a severe and possibly life-limiting abnormality, told her story.
When was 20 weeks pregnant her doctors informed her that her baby would be born without legs and with only rudimentary arms. One doctor told her that her baby “would never do anything other than lie on a bed”. Liz said she felt in no way supported by the medical professionals she and her husband dealt with. Instead they experienced “a clinical deep freeze”.
She told Claire Byrne that when she informed her doctors, “‘No, I’m keeping the baby’…medically I didn’t feel supported”.
This is appalling, and also very revealing. It is revealing of a mentality, present it seems in a growing part of the Irish medical profession, that seems to value only ‘perfect’ babies, and which does not sufficiently support parents who want to carry ‘imperfect’ babies to term.
Unfortunately, Claire Byrne did not seem to get the point of Liz’s story, namely the lack of support she felt after being told about her baby’s disability. Instead Byrne put it to McDermott that while she made a decision to have the baby, did she support women who made other choices?
Pressure
The main point of Liz’s story is that women whose babies suffer from a severe disability can be put under pressure to make a certain type of choice, that is, the choice to abort their babies. The point is that a ‘pro-choice’ culture soon becomes a culture in which there is an expectation to abort your baby in certain circumstances.
In England, for example, 90% of unborn babies diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. In Denmark the figure is 98%. The point is that soon, ‘choice’ becomes pressure.
Another point of Liz McDermott’s story is that her baby did not suffer from a so-called ‘fatal foetal abnormality’, which is to say, her baby’s condition was not going to result in her death. This means the pressure was on her to abort her baby simply because the baby had a severe disability.
Another woman who has spoken publicly in a similar way to Liz McDermott is Sinead McBreen. She was told 16 weeks into her pregnancy that her baby would not live long past birth. Her baby had Down Syndrome with, according to her doctors, added, life-limiting complications.
She said she felt her baby was “devalued” straight away by the doctors. She explained: “This is what my issue was. There was a pressure. There was an expectation that you should terminate. There was never any support where they said ‘We’ll work through this with you’.
“They said ‘Why do you want to continue with a pregnancy that’s going nowhere?’”
In the event, Sinead had the baby, and the baby lived. She has Down Syndrome, which is not ‘incompatible with life’ but clearly does clash with a philosophy which favours ‘perfect’ babies over ‘imperfect’ ones, that is with a philosophy of eugenics, which we thought we dead but which is, in fact, flourishing.
We know it is flourishing because of the number of “imperfect” babies that fall victim to abortion each year. In Britain in the three years to 2014, 30 babies were aborted simply because they had a cleft palate. That is eugenics at its most extreme.
As mentioned, the vast majority of diagnosed Down Syndrome babies are aborted in Britain and elsewhere. Given the growing number of testimonies that similar pressure exists here, we can easily imagine what will happen if we widen the grounds for abortion by deleting the pro-life amendment from our constitution.
Two important values are clearly weakening in Irish medical practice. One is tolerance for babies that suffer from one or another genetic abnormality, and the other is commitment to the vital medical principle, ‘first, do harm’.
Instead we are seeing a eugenics mentality combining with a pro-choice mentality to erode the idea that a primary duty of doctors is to do no harm to patients.
Pressuring women to abort imperfect babies is very obviously a dramatic violation of the principle, ‘first, do no harm’ because abortion kills a human being.
What should also be noted is how a eugenics mentality can easily contradict not only the right-to-life, but also the right to choose.
If women such as Liz McDermott and Sinead McBreen are being put under subtle and not-so-subtle pressure to abort their ‘imperfect’ babies, then some doctors are clearly more determined to ensure that certain babies are not born than to ensure that the autonomy of patients is respected.
In other words, those who support the right-to-choose should also be outraged when they hear stories such as McDermott’s and McBreen’s because pressure to abort violates their belief in freedom of choice.
All of this begs an extremely important question; where are the senior doctors who will stand up against eugenics and who will vigorously defend the principle, ‘first, do not harm’?
Dominant
Doctors who believe in the principle, ‘first, do no harm’ need to be heard by the public. They need to challenge their colleagues who want medicine to depart from this principle either in the name of ‘choice’ or else in the name of eugenics.
If we do not hear from them soon, then we can expect their more dominant colleagues to further insinuate their own very harmful ethic into Irish medical practice.