By Grania Spingies

At the beginning of the year Texas had a case of a woman being kept alive by a hospital for the sake of a fetus, even though it was against her own previously stated wishes as well as her husband’s. Eventually the court ruled to allow the machines to be turned off. It was bad enough that someone lost their wife tragically. It was obscene that he had to go to court to be allowed to bury her.

Now Ireland is closing out the year with a similar case, which won’t surprise anyone who has followed Ireland’s bizarre slow shuffle towards modernity, at least where reproductive systems are concerned. A number of related cases have been discussed on this website such as the appalling horror of Savita Halappanavar being condemned to die when she started to miscarry rather than receive medical intervention that might hasten the end of the fetus, owing to the legacy of perverse law-making which hamstrings medical staff while trying to appease its Catholic past. Even the new supposedly improved abortion laws of the country have not had the intended effect, but instead have resulted in more inhumane horror which Jerry wrote about here and in The New Republic.

Today the Irish Independent writes of a new case where a woman who is clinically brain dead but in the early second trimester of pregnancy is being kept alive against the wishes of her family. The problem appears to have arisen because the hospital is unsure if it is legally permissible to switch off the life support machinery. The new law was supposed to clarify the position of medical staff, but as evidently it has not helped at all especially as serious penalties are now attached to anyone who assists in the termination of a fetus except in the most narrow of circumstances. And so a grieving family now waits for lawyers and doctors to decide whether they will be allowed to bury their loved one with privacy they deserve.

Surprisingly, the Minister for Health, who is himself on the pro-life rather than pro-choice side, but is also a medical doctor has shown some compassion and understanding:

“Difficult decisions that should be made by women and their doctors, a couple or the next-of-kin where there is no capacity, and on the basis of best clinical practice, are now made on foot of legal advice. That isn’t how it should be.”