A chara, – Prof Fergal Malone, as he comes to an end of his time as Master of the Rotunda Hospital, makes an important point about the unrealistic expectation of perfection in matters of childbirth (News, December 26th). He is quoted as saying that, where a child is born less than fully healthy, “There should be some sort of no-fault system to allow that child to get the care they need.”
Where our system seems often to force resort to a lengthy adversarial legal system, it can add unnecessary stress, suffering and delay. We need also a similar “no-fault” system to assure any woman contemplating a termination of pregnancy, whether the motivation is medical or socio-economic, of all the support necessary bring her child to birth and for the time after.
He seems mistaken in speaking of the approximately 5,000 women who had an initial consultation with a GP about a termination and did not follow through. He says, “I wouldn’t assume that the difference must be change of mind. Don’t underestimate the number of miscarriages.” That would be relevant only where the miscarriage occurs within the three days of consideration time.
Prof Malone calls for the removal of the “paternalistic” three-day wait period before a woman can go ahead with a termination: “I don’t think I can come up with any other example of healthcare . . . where we require . . . " such a delay. But we have at this time no other example of healthcare where the deliberate intention of the procedure is to terminate a human life. Perhaps the nearest is a decision on whether and when to withdraw life-support.
There must be thousands of mothers and children who have good reason to be grateful to Prof Malone in his more than 30 years of practice. In relation to cases where there is a diagnosis of Down syndrome, he wrote, “The vast majority choose to terminate. I don’t have a view on whether that is the right thing.” He laments being precluded by law from carrying out all such terminations here: “Obviously it would be better if we could do the total care of our patients here in Ireland.”
It would be even better if every child with a diagnosis of Down Syndrome were also considered a patient worthy of total care.
He tells us that, “We have patients aged 40, 45 or 50 having babies all the time now.” Despite the wonders of modern medicine, it is clear that our society needs to ask how we can change our ways so that those having children will be better able to do so at the optimum age, 20 years earlier, without being penalised for doing so. – Is mise,
PÁDRAIG McCARTHY,
Sandyford,
Dublin 16.