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HSE Laments Lack of Abortion for Disabled Children : 24th Jun 09
HSE Laments Lack of Abortion for Disabled Children
An assertion by Ireland’s Health Services Executive (HSE) that the Constitutional ban on abortion causes the country’s high levels of scoliosis and spina bifida have provoked outrage and disgust as parents reacted to the insensitive comment.
Parents, disability campaigners and politicians expressed horror at the HSE’s shocking assertion, which came at the end of a statement on the delays affecting spinal operations at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin.
The HSE alleged that “The incidence of children with scoliosis in Ireland is different to other countries, as termination of pregnancies that have a prenatal diagnosis of spina bifida, or other conditions that may develop spinal curvature, is not legal in Ireland”.
Emer Murphy, mother of an 11-year-old spina bifida patient, expressed her revulsion: “How I would interpret it is they are saying that the waiting lists are long because we don’t have abortion, and basically I shouldn’t have Jamie, and parents in a similar position wouldn’t have had their special children. Even if you do not have a child with disability, this is deeply offensive”.
She continued, “I was young when I had Jamie. She made me the person that I am. If I had ten more children like Jamie I would consider myself lucky”.
Independent TD Finian McGrath, a campaigner for people with disabilities who has a daughter with Down Syndrome, blasted the HSE’s remark as an “insult” and “outrageous”. He called the HSE “disgraceful” because it “went into a moral area that has nothing to do with them, and it’s an insult to parents of all children with disabilities”.
Aisling McNiffe, whose four-year-old son Jack has severe disabilities and has spent three out of four years of his life at the Children’s Hospital in Crumlin, said the HSE statement was incredible: “Are they suggesting we parents should have aborted our precious babies? I, for one, would never have done such a thing and am shocked and hurt by the insinuation that we should have”.
Jeff Rudd, the father of four-year-old Dakota, who’s in a fiberglass body cast for her scoliosis, asked, “Are we supposed to feel partly guilty because we didn’t have our child aborted? It is below the belt. It is disgraceful way of trying to justify their actions”.
Carmel Walsh, the mother of 16-year-old scoliosis sufferer Carol Ann Walsh, branded the HSE’s words as “completely insensitive”. Irish Daily Mail. June 20.
F&L Comment: This is the second time this year that the HSE has given evidence that it believes it would be better if expensive to care for patients were dead. First it was the elderly and terminally ill, now it is severely ill children. This is an organisation which will have to deliver medical care to Irish people through what may be a long and very deep recession.
Money will be in short supply and the people who run the HSE need to learn that killing the patient is not the answer.
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