Abortion laws under scrutiny as family of woman want doctors to switch off her life-support machine

Ireland’s highly restrictive abortion laws have come under renewed focus after it emerged that doctors in an Irish hospital are seeking legal advice over whether they can switch off the life support machine of a brain-dead woman who is 16 weeks pregnant.

The family of the woman want the medical team there to allow her to die. The woman, who is understood to be in her mid to late twenties, suffered head trauma and a clot to the brain.

But even though there is no chance of revival, doctors at the hospital are reluctant to carry out her family’s wishes because she is 16 weeks pregnant.

Under the 8th amendment to the Irish Republic’s constitution the foetus inside her is as much an Irish citizen as the clinically dead mother.

In 1983 a coalition of conservative Catholic pressure groups sought and won a national referendum that effectively made even the embryo after conception an Irish citizen fully protected under the law.

The news about the dilemma facing the medical team emerged less than 24 hours after Ireland’s health minister, Leo Varadkar, admitted that even the country’s latest reform of the abortion law was too restrictive and imposed a “chilling effect” on Irish doctors.

The Irish media are reporting that the woman’s family are now seeking a legal challenge over the hospital’s refusal to turn off the life support machine. This would then entail the Irish state going to court to legally represent the foetus being kept alive via the life support.

This is the second time in 2014 that the rights of a mother and family and the rights of a foetus have come into conflict.

Earlier this year a group of Irish medical experts refused to allow a teenage rape victim to obtain an abortion in an Irish hospital. The girl was forced to go full term and have the child even though she repeatedly claimed she was suicidal.

The girl, known only as Y, is now taking a legal case against the Irish state over its insistence she go through with the pregnancy and its refusal to recognise that she was at risk of suicide if she had the child. That child is now in the custody of the state.

Under last year’s Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act a very restricted number of abortions would be allowed in Irish hospitals. These would be for women who would die if their pregnancy continued and for those who were in danger of taking their own lives if they were forced to go full term.

Varadkar told the Irish parliament on Wednesday that he would support extending access to terminations in Irish hospitals to women with conditions such as fatal foetal abnormalities but never full abortion on demand.

He made his remarks during a Dáil debate on a private member’s bill from a leftwing deputy, Clare Daly, who tried but failed on Wednesday evening to fully legalise abortion in the state. Daly’s motion was defeated by 110 votes to 13.

Irish pro-choice campaigners say that the confusion due to the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act can only be solved by abolishing article 8 of the constitution.

But this can only come about if the government in Dublin calls another national referendum on the issue. So far most of the major political parties in the state have baulked from demanding a new referendum.