Women's rights, when it comes to issues like abortion, do not rate highly in Ireland. Recently a young woman died after complications during a miscarriage, which the medical staff refused to treat because there was still a foetal heartbeat. Since that tragedy, there has been a push in Ireland to relax its anti-abortion laws so that pregnant women, at risk of death due to illness or a complication or through miscarriage or suicide, can obtain an abortion. Each case is decided on a case by case basis and a panel of 3 doctors hand down their findings, which apparently must be unanimous amongst the 3 doctors. Before that happens, the woman has to be questioned and examined by a variety of doctors, all of whom are able to apply their own personal feelings into their decision..
I would imagine most would agree that forcing a woman to remain pregnant, against her wishes and if it is driving her to the point of suicide, is a horrific thing. Not so for the Irish authorities. A teenager, applied to the Government, to be given the right to have an abortion after she discovered she was 8 weeks pregnant. The young woman, an immigrant who spoke little English, was the victim of a traumatic rape and the pregnancy was the result of that rape.
The young woman was traumatised and depressed and suicidal. Now, this should be a fairly clear cut case. Here was a young rape victim, pregnant as a result of her rape, suicidal and very depressed and who did not want to carry the off-spring of her rapist and give birth to it. No one can fault this woman for applying for an abortion the moment
she found out she was pregnant at 8 weeks..
The Irish edition of The Sunday Times reports that the woman first discovered she was pregnant at about eight weeks and, as the victim of a “traumatic rape,” immediately began the process for obtaining a mental health exemption to Ireland’s abortion law. Since she is not a citizen of Ireland, she couldn’t travel to another European country to end the pregnancy.
After the woman was examined by two psychologists and one obstetrician, both psychologists agreed she was having suicidal thoughts that put her life at risk. But the obstetrician determined her fetus was viable and should be delivered.
What the panel of 3 doctors hearing the case then did to her, is, in every sense of the word, appalling. To make sure she continued with the pregnancy, they delayed releasing their findings.. For 17 weeks. Here was a case of a young suicidal rape victim who was still a minor, who wished to abort the foetus that was there solely because she had been brutally raped. They waited 17 weeks to make sure that the foetus was viable when they handed down their ruling. By which point, she was 25 weeks pregnant.
The request for an abortion was denied.
So, she went on a hunger strike, whereupon
she was taken to court to be forced to be re-hydrated because of the risk it posed to the foetus and then
given the choice to have a c-section, which she accepted under duress of all she had endured.
There is one thing that suicidal rape victims need: immediate assistance. But for one young woman in Ireland who was pregnant and seeking an abortion after reportedly being attacked, the only thing her government offered was the slow, bureaucratic violation of her humanity.
The unnamed woman, now 18, was reportedly raped as a minor and sought an abortion just eight weeks into her pregnancy. Even after experts found her to be suicidal – a prerequisite for abortion under a new Irish law – she was denied access to the procedure. According to a report by the Sunday Times, the woman, who is not an Irish citizen, believes that the government deliberately delayed her case – both through the state’s decision to ignore psychiatric experts and via her inability to travel because of her legal status – so that she would have to carry the pregnancy at least through the fetus’s viability. After going on a hunger strike, she was forced to undergo a caesarean section at just 25 weeks into her pregnancy.
Here we have a young traumatised and depressed teenage rape victim, who became pregnant as the result of her rape, who was then forced to undergo questioning, examination by different doctors, all to see if she would be eligible to terminate her pregnancy. They then force her to wait 17 weeks, deny her request and then take her to court because they feared for the safety of the foetus. At no time did they care about her or what happened to her.
The process to apply for an abortion is obscene. And it is all based on the whim and personal feelings of the doctors who conduct the examinations..
Quite a few of them in fact.
O'Keane, a consultant psychiatrist for more than 21 years, said because there was no national body to rule on these cases vulnerable women were left "at the mercy of a local, moral and political lottery. They could come up against anti-choice physicians who in effect become conscientious obstructors to abortion."
She added: "The repeated examination of a woman's mental state by at least four doctors, and possibly seven, the repeated questioning specifically about suicidal ideation and intent, will not only be overly invasive, confusing and distressing emotionally, it will also be time-consuming in a period of crisis when a suicidal woman needs access to a termination as soon as possible."
She called the guidelines "completely inappropriate". "I would have preferred a national review panel to make these decisions because Ireland is a small country," she said. "It would have been better in terms of privacy and access to mental health professionals who are committed to enacting the spirit of the legislation. We have a very strong anti-choice lobby in psychiatry and there should have been procedures put in place to allow women to bypass them and their moral, political, theocratic obstacles."
O'Keane pointed out that the section called "Risk to life from Suicidal Intent" means pregnant women have to state explicitly that they are going to kill themselves before being considered for a termination.
"This is very bad practice because if psychiatrists are practising within these guidelines then that will be the stipulation, that the woman in question must state that. Yet in the majority of cases of suicide that psychiatrists deal with there is no stated intention of killing themselves.
"The terms of reference are too narrow and dangerous, and we in Ireland have very high rates of suicide and even a government drive to reduce suicide numbers. In these guidelines, what we are actually doing is saying to Irish women, 'You have to actually tell us that you're going to kill yourself or you won't get that abortion.' It is completely contrary to good psychiatric practice."
Now imagine a young suicidal teenage rape victim having to go through this and then be rejected after being forced to wait 17 weeks (up to the point of viability, what a surprise there).. And then given the choice of a c-section to save the foetus or be forced to carry it to term..
I don't think misogyny is even the correct word to use here.
Sick and twisted as fuck, maybe.