Court Date Set after a Dublin Woman Dies after an Abortion

The Pro Life Campaign has criticised today the continuing refusal of the Government to comment on the latest scandal where a woman from Dublin bled to death following an abortion in a Marie Stopes clinic in London in 2012.

Commenting on the news that a court date of July 3rd has been fixed for the doctor and two nurses charged with manslaughter in the case, Cora Sherlock, Deputy Chairperson of the Pro Life Campaign, said:

“The continued silence from various members of the Government is very revealing about how the issue of abortion is dealt with in this country.  There has been no attempt whatsoever to address the fact that this unfortunate woman lost her life as a direct result of the treatment she received when undergoing an abortion. It seems that the loss of this woman’s life doesn’t merit attention simply because it doesn’t suit the agenda of abortion advocates.”

“Even though more of the facts of this case have now become available, there has still been no reaction from those members of the Government who are most vocal when it comes to attempts to further liberalise Ireland’s abortion laws.  Where is their outrage for the welfare of this woman, who fell prey to the falsehood of a “safe, legal abortion”? The Government ignoring this woman’s death is absolutely shameful.”

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Note: The doctor and two nurses charged with manslaughter, Dr. Adedayo Adedeji, Gemma Pullen and Margaret Miller will now go forward for trial at London’s Old Bailey on July 3rd

"Where is the Political Outrage over Death of Woman from Ireland after Abortion in Marie Stopes Clinic?"

Deputy Chairperson of the Pro Life Campaign asks "where is the plitical outrage over the death of a woman from Ireland after she had an abortion in a Marie Stopes Clinic in London?"  as the silence of Government politicians over latest case highlights the colossal double standard in the abortion debate.

The Pro Life Campaign has accused members of the Government of “selective outrage” on the issue of abortion. It follows news that a doctor and two nurses in England have been charged with manslaughter after a woman from Ireland bled to death in the back of a London taxi within hours of undergoing an abortion at a Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, London.

Commenting on the tragic case,  Ms Sherlock said: “It’s very revealing the way members of the Government have fallen silent over this latest Marie Stopes scandal. It lays bare the colossal double standards at the heart of the abortion debate in Ireland.

“The tragic death of Savita Halappanavar was misused, massively and continuously by certain politicians and journalists to get abortion legislation over the line in 2013. There was little or no regard at the time for the facts of that particular case which showed the real cause of the tragedy in Galway was mismanaged sepsis, not the non-availability of abortion in Ireland at the time.

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Groups presssure Lancet editor to delay publication of maternal mortality research

Lancet, a leading medical journal, has just published a new study of international maternal mortality rates, which finds that the World Bank, the WHO and UNICEF statistics for maternal mortality were over 100,000 too high due to reporting and methodological problems.

But in a corrupt and brazen, and thankfully, unsuccessful, attempt to subordinate science to politics, ‘advocacy groups’ lobbied the editor of Lancet, Dr Richard Horton to delay the publication of the new study until after upcoming meetings of the UN Commission on Population and Development, the Women Deliver Conference and the next UN Assembly, which are scheduled to discuss maternal mortality.

What’s bugging these ‘advocates’? Dr Donna Harrison, President of the American Academy of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said of the new Lancet article:

"The study uses the best statistical methods currently available and clearly demonstrates that worldwide legalization of abortion is unnecessary to bring about significant decreases in maternal mortality. The American Academy of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynaecologists encourages the UN member nations to continue to develop even better statistical information by improving the identification of maternal mortality causality, especially induced abortion related mortality, which is most often underreported or misreported".

Where the UN bodies have been pushing for ‘safe’ and ‘legal’ abortion as the key to bringing improving maternal mortality rates, the new Lancet article does not. It found key causal factors improving maternal mortality – falling pregnancy rates in some countries, higher per capita income, higher education rates for women, and increasing availability of basic medical care, and in particular, ‘skilled birth attendants’.

Medical care not abortion improves maternal mortality rates in developing countries

Since the late 1960s deaths of mothers having children have fallen dramatically -- “current rates for developed countries are between one-fortieth and one-fiftieth of the rates that prevailed 60 years ago”, a peer reviewed article by Irvine Loudon published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found.[1]


What brought about this ‘dramatic’ improvement in the safety of mothers in pregnancy and birth? Was it permissive abortion laws? Loudon’s survey of the relevant factors concludes, “The main factors that led to thisdecline seem to have been successive improvements in maternalcare rather than higher standards of living.”

This suggests that the way to improve safety for mothers and their children during pregnancy and birth is not the introduction of permissive abortion laws, but improving the availability and quality of care and education for mothers having children.

This is confirmed by preliminary findings presented by Chilean epidemiologist, Dr Elard Koch, of the University of Chile faculty of medicine. He was addressing the inaugural meeting of the International Group for Global Women’s Health Research in Washington DC last month.[2]

Maternal mortality in Chile fell from 275 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 1960 to 18.7 in 2000, the largest fall in any Latin American country. What caused this dramatic improvement?

Dr Koch said, ‘From 1960 onwards, there has been a breakthrough in the public health system and primary care’ in Chile. Resources, he added, were put into the development of ‘highly trained personnel, the construction of many primary health centres and the increase of schooling of the population.’

Chile protects unborn life in its constitution and laws - the improvement in maternal safety was not brought about by legalising abortion.

In Latin America, Chile which has pro-life legislation also has the lowest maternal mortality rate, while Guyana which brought in more liberal abortion laws in the mid-1990s putatively because of high maternal mortality rates, has the highest maternal rates, suggesting that they are applying the wrong solution to the problem, wider abortion instead of improving maternal care and education.

While International Planned Parenthood, the international abortion advocacy multinational, recently noted ‘a huge surge in maternal deaths’ in South Africa between 2007 and 2007 .[3]

They quoted the South African Report, ‘Saving Mothers 2005 – 2007’ which accepted a 20% increase in maternal deaths over the period, and acknowledged that nearly 4 out of every 10 of these deaths ‘were clearly avoidable within the health care system’.

Also mentioned in the report are ‘deaths due to complications of abortion’. South Africa has a permissive abortion legislation so it is not unreasonable to see in here a wrong solution becoming part of the problem.

It is becoming clearer by the day that the way to improve maternal mortality rates in developing countries is to improve the availability and quality of maternal care and education, and that legalising abortion in developing countries is part of the problem not part of the solution.


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[1] Maternal mortality in the past and its relevance to developing countries today’ American Journal of
Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 72, No. 1, 241S-246s, July 2000
[2] Friday Fax, the C-Fam Institute, Vol. 13, No. 9, 11th February 2010, http://www.c-fam.org/publications/id.1571/pub_detail.asp,
accessed on 23rd February 2010.)
[3] http://www.ippf.org/en/News/Intl+news/South+Africa+Huge+surge+in+maternal+deaths.htm