Only religion can make people this cruel:
An Irish woman has died after she was denied an abortion, even though she was having a miscarriage, because the medical staff found a fetal heartbeat and so would not intervene.
31-year-old Savita Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to University Hospital Galway on October 21 with severe back pain and nausea. She was found to be having a miscarriage.
When her condition worsened she and her family repeatedly asked that a doctor induce labor so she could be treated. Despite their pleas, staff at the hospital said that Ireland is a “Catholic country” and because they had detected a fetal heartbeat, and that the fetus could not survive on its own, they would not intervene.
(via Care2 Causes)
The fetus was not going to survive in any event, but what of that? Can anyone doubt that Jesus would have left the woman to die? Well, actually many could, but then, Jesus wasn’t a Catholic. This case may eventually, along with the increasing secularization of Ireland, lead to liberalization of Ireland’s draconian abortion laws. To be fair, the hospital could have legally performed the abortion, but apparently there’s a lot of wiggle room available and these folks chose to wiggle.
It appears the anti-abortionists in Ireland are every bit as dogmatic as our homegrown members of that club:
However, so-called pro-life groups have clamored to downplay this story, with the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Children saying in a statement:
“It is not ethical to induce delivery of an unborn child if there is no prospect of the child surviving outside the womb. At 17 weeks’ pregnancy Mrs Halappanavar’s child was clearly not viable outside the womb, as there is no scientific evidence that unborn children are capable of surviving outside the womb at such a young age. Rather than removing the protection of the womb from unborn children, the ethical response to emergency situations in pregnancy is medical treatment of the mother for the conditions causing the emergency. In the case of infection, this is usually timely administration of antibiotics. It is also not ethical to end the life of an unborn child, via induction or any other means, where the child is terminally-ill.”
So there you have it. The viability of a fetus, or for that matter a zygote, doesn’t matter. It must be allowed to die a natural death. The mother’s death is merely collateral damage, or as some Republicans might say, something “God intended”.
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