Can we get this clear
This was not a "bungled medical emergency" - it was a deliberate refusal to carry out a life-saving (routine elsewhere) medical procedure on a woman purely on religious grounds - despite requesting the procedure she was told it could not be carried out because "Ireland was a Catholic Country" - a deliberate act of letting the woman die, simple as that.
This has been admitted by all concerned, to the extent that the government has been forced to introduce new (extremely limited) laws.
These were opposed strenuously by the Church, even to the point where politicians in favour of them were threatened with excommunication from the church - extreme spiritual blackmail which, as any Catholic knows, is tantamount to condemning the soul to eternal torment.
The South American cases were even more cold bloodedly devious as they occurred in a country that was allowed to carry out such procedures according to law.
An 11 year old girl, the daughter of an itinerant family of fruit pickers, was raped by a farmer.
The family reported the rape, but no action was taken.
Some time later the girl fell ill and the family took her to a church-run hospital, where they reported that she had contacted two sexually communicated diseases - they hid the fact that the girl was also pregnant and that giving birth would almost certainly kill her; it was also revealed at a later stage that the foetus had virtually no chance of survival, the mother being far too young and physically incapable of delivering.
These facts were kept hidden until if was too late for the family to insist on a termination legally.
The family appealed to the local clergy, one of whose officials told them that the girl should "embrace her martyrdom with pride".
To save the girl's life the family were forced to flee over the border to have the foetus aborted at an extremely late stage in the pregnancy - as a last minute act-of-mercy.
To describe these as "medical bungling" is grotesquely misleading - it is the religious persecution of an 11 year old child at its most gross - and it should have pride-of-place on discussions such as this.
To attempt to prevent such discussion is crude censorship - nothing more.
In the Sarita Halappanava case it is also extremely misleading to describe the refusal to terminate as " medical staff who appear to have totally misunderstood the laws of both of Ireland and of the Catholic Church"
The law, which has been held in place by Church pressure, prevented the woman from having an operation - the staff knew this.
Like the South American cases - the church opposes pregnancy termination under all circumstances and even opposed the shoddy set that the Government has now been forced to introduce.
Citing what happened in Italy is totally dishonest, as anybody who takes the trouble to read the unique circumstances that brought about those changes - once again, despite fierce opposition from the church - (link above)
Jim Carroll