CLARE DALY READ out an emotional letter from a woman who has recently received a diagnosis that the foetus she was carrying had a condition of fatal foetal abnormality and was incompatible with life.
The woman received the news after her sister, who was pregnant at the same time, lost her baby when it died in the womb.
She described how her sister was medically assisted in delivering her baby, and how the family buried him and mourned him.
However, describing the road ahead for her situation, the woman wrote:
“I have watched what my sister went through, the amount of support she was offered and the support she will require over the coming months. I feel so angry that this support is not available to me
“I do not want to terminate my baby’s life but he does not have one. A heartbeat does not equate to an independent life for my boy, it only confirms a short few hours of pain for him and a lifetime of it for us.
The dignity shown to the tiny corpse of my nephew in the hospital, in the mortuary and on his first and final journey home will not be extended to my son as he will have to be locked in the boot of the car on a ferry journey back across the Irish Sea or his ashes delivered by a courier weeks later, along with Amazon and eBay purchases.
Cruel, inhuman and degrading
Daly hit out at the Taoiseach’s proposals saying it would be “at least 2018 before any proposals will be before the people to remedy this”.
“In anybody’s book it is cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The Government has appeared in front of international human rights bodies and has been instructed to deal with these matters but the Taoiseach has done nothing.”
Enda Kenny responded by saying that the bill is not good for women. “It’s bad for women and it’s inadequate.”
Kenny added that the services surrounding cases of fatal foetal abnormality “should be improved and we are trying to make arrangements that that be so”.
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