1.) @ChuckV – Why should bishops have any say in MEDICAL DECISIONS AT ALL even for Catholics?!

THEY ARE NOT DOCTORS. This is a MEDICAL decision, not a religious one. They do not have the expertise necessary to properly assess the situation. It is only by religious interference that you would EVER end up with the results in a case like Savita’s.

Would you go to a medical doctor for spiritual advice? No? Why would you go to a clergyman for medical advice?

2.) @Bernadette asked, “Was the situation caused by the pregnancy or by an bad infection? Was the baby the source of the infection being untreatable? Could this woman have died of this infection even if she was not pregnant?”

Answer: The infection was caused due to miscarriage being allowed to last simply because the fetus still had a heart beat, causing unnecessary, prolonged exposure of highly vulnerable epithelial tissue.

If she was never pregnant this wouldn’t have happened because 1.) she wouldn’t have been exposed the way she was (and you could say the same if she hadn’t miscarried) and 2.) her immune system wouldn’t have been compromised and unable to fight off the infection. (Pregnancy already causes immunosuppression. The trauma caused by miscarriage made this even worse.)

The exposure to infection, the inability to fight the infection, and death is a direct result of being pregnant, miscarrying, and then not receiving proper medical treatment thanks to religious interference.

3.) This was a clear cut case. The fetus will die. There was no other option. The only options should have been about the welfare of the mother.

Not only was she in excruciating pain waiting for the miscarriage to finish, but she was put at unnecessary risk of infection, and that’s what killed her.

I’m not a doctor, but I am a biologist and I’m extremely well versed in how infections happen. Aside from a direct breach from a cut or puncture, the next source of infection is almost always epithelial cells.

A dilated cervix exposes extremely vulnerable epithelial cells because they don’t have the same defenses as say the epithelial in your lungs or intestines.

This is made worse because bodies in stress/trauma are immunosuppressed. This woman was not only pregnant but miscarrying. Add a high chance of infection with an inability to fight off everything that gets in and that’s what happened here.

The chances of infection would have been reduced to almost nothing had they dealt with the fetus when it was certain it couldn’t possibly survive. Abortion in this case should have been the immediate step. The results of this case were caused directly caused my religion preventing proper medical care.

Is a single cell seriously to be equated with a human being? How radically must we change the definition of a human being for this to be true? If a single cell which is genetically a “human” cell counts as a being, how many beings am I made up of? How many do I kill every time I scratch an itch?

Once it is part of the law, with potential professional or even criminal sanctions against the doctors, the doctors will necessarily withhold potentially life saving abortions because of legal risk. The supposed exemptions do not work, because in many cases it is unclear just how much risk is allowed and how risky the current situation is for the mother. There have been cases like this in the past and there will be more in future.

“Inducing delivery would have put the _mother_ at greater risk… In this case, a Caesarean would also have put the mother’s life at greater risk. ”

You really, really need to substantiate this. Are you a doctor? Do you specialize in Ob/Gyn? Do you have specific knowledge of this case?

You justify the decision in this case based on an assertion for which, as far as I can tell, you have absolutely no evidence. It’s rather hypocritical of you to accuse others of “politicizing” this event when you’re bending over backwards to do so yourself.

Perhaps I’m wrong, and you do have specific information to share. If you do, please share. Otherwise, I’m forced to conclude that you’re making a deliberate attempt to confuse the issue and mislead readers.

But is it also “permissible” to refuse the same treatments ? Like what happened in this particular case ?

There’s a big difference between saying “Doctors -could- have performed the procedure” and “Doctors -should- have performed the procedure”.

For what it’s worth (I am not a doctor), here is my understanding. The woman began to have a miscarriage and went to the hospital. She knew she was miscarrying, and wanted an abortion. A miscarriage can go on for several days, or possibly longer. It is my understanding that a miscarriage cannot be stopped and the baby saved. So in this case, the baby had no chance of survival. However, the baby’s heart was still beating, so the hospital refused to remove the baby, since it was too young to survive on its own. During the time the woman was in the process of miscarrying, she developed the infections. Presumably, if the baby had been removed early, the woman would not have become infected. It seems reasonable to me to assume that the longer a woman is in the process of miscarrying, the more vulnerable she is to infection, although I am also assuming it would be difficult to say for certain that the same infection would not have followed an abortion.

So my understanding is that the baby could not be saved, but the delay in waiting for the baby to die naturally conceivably put the woman at risk for the infection that killed her. The woman might have been saved, but the baby could not have been saved, and rather than aborting a baby that had no chance of survival, they waited for it to die.

While I am speculating, I will speculate that different Catholic medical ethicists will have different opinions about what is properly done in such a case, and different bishops might make different calls for hospitals under their control.

But it should be noted in this case that it was a matter of what the hospital considered legal under Irish law, not what a Catholic ethics committee or bishop decided was the proper course of treatment, since the woman was not in a Catholic hospital.