Vicky Wall Vicky Wall
This week, abortion campaigners are busy celebrating the repeal of the Eighth Amendment, but many people – including many ‘Yes’ voters – are instead appalled at the tragic case that has come to light from the National Maternity Hospital.
I’m devastated for the parents at the centre of this horrendous abortion misdiagnosis case, and for their little baby whose life was ended at 15-weeks on the basis that a screening test had led doctors to believe that he or she had Trisomy18. We now know that subsequent tests showed there was nothing wrong with the baby.
As more details emerge, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the parents felt pushed towards abortion at a time when they were both vulnerable and fearful. Their solicitor says they were told the baby had a “fatal abnormality”, and that there was “no hope”. They say that they were “actively” told there was no need for them to wait for another test before having an abortion, that the next stage of testing “would make no difference”.
Concerns
The mother says her concerns about the accuracy of the first test (concerns that were tragically proved to be correct) were dismissed.
What was perhaps most revealing and disturbing of all was that the parents say they never raised the issue of termination. That came from the medics at the National Maternity Hospital.
When I read that, my heart broke, for this family and their little baby and for all the families who are offered only abortion and sorrow instead of love and support.
I know what that’s like. I remember sitting, frozen with fear and blinded by tears, as a doctor told us abortion would be the best thing for me and for my baby girl, who was kicking and moving even as he judged her life not to be worthwhile.
My beautiful daughter Líadán lost her life to Trisomy 18, but I got to hold her in my arms and to love her for every minute before she was born. I felt some doctors didn’t value her life, and, when I look back I can see that without the support of my family, without a pause to reflect and gather my strength, maybe I too would been pushed towards abortion, suffering some of the same pain that family now feels
I know that pressure to abort, to be told your child is a ‘fatal abnormality’ – that horrible, ugly phrase that parents have literally begged Simon Harris and the HSE not to use. It happened to me, so I know that in the fear and panic people can be made to feel there is no other option.
Long before the referendum last year, the parents in Every Life Counts – the support group for families whose baby has a life-limiting condition of which I am a member – wrote to Leo Varadkar when he was Minister for Health. We explained that a growing number of families in our group had hugely negative experiences in Irish hospitals when their baby was diagnosed with a life-limiting condition.
We said that these families felt abortion was being pushed as the first, and sometimes only, option – and that this was reflected in studies such as research in the American Journal of Medical Genetics (2013) which found that 61% of parents reported feeling pressure to terminate.
We explained that parents were not given real, factual information about the condition being diagnosed and often were sent home to ‘Google it’ with predictably distressing results.
We knew that the distinction between a screening and diagnostic test was not well understood by families. And we wanted to explain that modern medical literature showed that doctors needed to be cognisant of new findings in relation to conditions like Trisomy 18. As a recent important editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Dr John Lantos opined: “Babies with these conditions used to be described as ‘incompatible with life’.” But “in the age of social media, however, everything changed. Parents share stories and videos, showing their happy 4-5-year-old children with these conditions. Survival, it turns out, is not as rare as once thought.”
Leo Varadkar refused to meet us. When Simon Harris subsequently took the role of Health Minister, he did the same. Neither of them wanted to listen to bereaved parents who were desperate for the system to learn from its mistakes, who wanted kinder, fairer and less prejudiced responses to other families.
Instead, both of them seemed fixated on using cases involving life-limiting conditions to legalise abortion. It didn’t seem to matter that there were no safeguards in place to ensure parents would not be pushed towards abortions – that so-called choice would not become an expectation.
The referendum was particularly distressing. Parents like me who wanted to point out the dangers involved were ignored or sometimes shouted down. When others shared our stories, they were sneeringly asked why we didn’t go to the gardaí. The cruelty of that brought me to tears at the time.
We said that these families felt abortion was being pushed as the first, and sometimes only, option
Nothing can undo an abortion. Nothing can bring this baby back. But we need answers to questions – not just for this family but for all families facing a poor diagnosis for baby.
Why was the attitude of staff seemingly weighted so heavily in favour of abortion? Was the option of continuing with the pregnancy even presented to the family? Were they told that perinatal hospice care was available? Were they given the details of support groups who could have helped them?
Why were the parents not told it was advisable to wait for the result of a conclusive test before having an abortion? It wasn’t because of the law, because Simon Harris has made it possible to have an abortion until birth in this situation.
Leo Varadkar is reported as having said that “being a doctor… I am aware that these cases can happen”, a response that ignores his Government’s failure to ensure safeguards against parents being pushed into abortion, and their refusal to learn from the experiences of other families.
The tragedy that has subsequently unfolded is what happens when our system and our medical professionals fail to understand that abortion should never be a first option, and that every life counts.