Treatment that risks foetus can be 'ethically permissible' - Catholic bishops

[rug]

Updated: 20:24, Monday, 19 November 2012

The country's Catholic bishops have said medical treatment on a seriously-ill pregnant woman which may endanger the foetus is ethically permissible provided every effort is made to save both lives.

The Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference has also reiterated its condolences to the family of Savita Halappanavar on what they call its "devastating personal tragedy" which has "stunned our country".

Bishops released a statement on the matter this evening, following a meeting in Maynooth of the Standing Committee of the Irish hierarchy.

It focuses on what the conference calls the "equal and inalienable right to life of a mother and her unborn child".

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/1119/x-case-legislation-abortion.html

[No Vested Interest]

1. Now the bishops need to inform/educate

all physicians and the hospitals in which they practice of this policy.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

2. The story says that the bishops value the lives of the mother and the fetus equally

However, the case of Ms. Halappanavar makes it quite clear that they do not. If Ms. Halappanavar died -- as she did -- then the fetus would die as well -- as it did. I have asked how, in cases such as this, having a dead mother and a dead fetus is morally superior to having a dead fetus alone. I have yet to get a meaningful answer. Indeed, I have yet to get a coherent answer.

[No Vested Interest]

3. Tragic any way you look at it

It is not clear that an Irish bishop was at fault here in denying the patient life-saving surgery.
Rather, hospital policy and cowardly doctors seem to have been following what they wrongly interpreted to be Catholic doctrine.