An Irish woman who claims that hospital staff made her feel like a criminal when she asked for an emergency abortion will take her case against Éire to the United Nations. Siobhán Whelan said she was made to feel as if it ‘was illegal’ to ask Irish doctors if she’d be allowed to have an abortion in September 2009 after learning that her baby would die.
Siobhán is the second Irish woman to file a challenge at the UN against the Irish ban on abortions for medical reasons and is being backed by the New York Centre For Reproductive Rights. And although you might have read that terminations were introduced in Éire last year, women are only allowed abortions if their lives are at risk. There is still no provision for providing a termination if the feotus is suffering from fatal abnormalities - as in Whelan's case.
Her doctor that she would be offered an abortion in another jurisdiction, but not in Ireland. Another doctor then handed Siobhán a report of the scan saying she would need it if she was to travel abroad for an abortion.
Although Whelan was told by her doctor that she would be given an abortion in another jurisdiction, she claims that she was given no advice on how she should contact a hospital in the UK to arrange an abortion and did no information on what the procedure would entail. She subsequently decided to terminate the pregnancy, and her husband had to arrange for childcare and time off work and pay for travel, accommodation and the procedure itself Fetal Assessment Centre at Liverpool Women's Hospital.
The Centre for Reproductive Rights has filed a petition at the UN human rights committee asking to hold Ireland accountable for the degrading treatment Whelan suffered at the hands of Irish medical health professionals, saying they interfered with her privacy and discriminated against her on the basis of gender.
Johanna Westeson, director for Europe at the Centre For Reproductive Rights, said that ‘Ireland's harsh policies made Siobhán fearful to even ask about her options and allowed her healthcare providers to give up on her once she made the decision to end her pregnancy. The UN human rights committee should act swiftly and call on Ireland to expand woman's access to abortion care as demanded under human rights law.’
The UN human rights committee can’t impost a sanction on Ireland but the centre hopes that the action will generate global pressure on politicians to change their legislation.
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Picture: Corbis
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.