Sir, – The fact that the so-called Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013 has come into effect in the absence of clinical guidelines being issued by the Department of Health is profoundly disturbing from a legal and medical perspective (Home News, January 3rd, 2014).
The purpose of this Act, according to the Government, was to eliminate a supposed lacuna in the law which it wrongly claimed had arisen as a result of the decision in X case.
Ironically, instead of removing a gap in the law which did not exist in the first place, the commencement of the Act in the absence of clinical guidelines has created just such a gap, since a pregnant woman is now entitled by statute to an abortion in certain circumstances but medical professionals have no means of ascertaining exactly what these circumstances are.
The fact that no guidelines have been formulated a full five months after the Act was signed can hardly be of great surprise to anyone.
At the Oireachtas Health Committee hearings on abortion, held one year ago this week, the Government was repeatedly warned about the difficulties that would be faced in formulating guidelines to cover the issue of suicidal ideation. Psychiatrists who attended the hearings were unanimously of the view that an abortion is not a treatment for suicidal ideation in a woman, in any circumstances, and therefore it was bound to prove difficult for the Department of Health to produce a set of guidelines which expected doctors to act as if the very opposite were the case.
Unfortunately the Government chose, for political reasons, to completely ignore the evidence from psychiatrists and the ethical conundrum which would arise for doctors as a result of the Act. It will be interesting to see exactly what medico-legal somersaults the Department of Health will seek to perform in order to overcome these enormous difficulties. – Yours, etc,
BARRY WALSH
Brooklawn,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.