Madam, - It is hard to believe that in 2005, a group of cancer patients could be deprived of access to important medical treatment on religious grounds. Yet this has happened in the Mater hospital.
Clinical trials for a new cancer drug are deferred because the Mater does not want women undergoing the treatment to be advised to use contraception, irrespective of the need to prevent foetal harm, and irrespective of what the women and their doctors might want. Catholic priests have defended the rights of hospitals to assert their religious ethos - but what about the rights of seriously ill women to access treatment in publicly funded institutions without sectarian interference?
From the Church's role in killing off Noel Browne's Mother and Child Scheme in 1949, through the barbaric practice of symphysiotomies and right up to today, Catholic doctrine has had a pernicious and long-lasting effect upon the health of women in Ireland.
How much longer will this endure? - Yours, etc.,
IVANA BACIK, Law School, Trinity College, Dublin 2.