Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
“WHO WOULD MAKE a woman grow a baby just to watch it suffer and die? It’s barbaric and it really has to stop.”
That’s the plea of one woman who had to travel to the UK to terminate her pregnancy for medical reasons.
A number of women from the support group TFMR Ireland will tell politicians of their journeys from conception to mourning at a briefing in Leinster House this afternoon.
A documentary by Luke McManus, featuring some of the couples and women who lost their babies, will be shown ahead of the launch of Clare Daly’s proposed amendment to the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act.
The group is hoping for cross-party support to allow for the Bill which would give hospitals permission to terminate pregnancies where the babies are incompatible with life.
TDs and Senators will hear from six families, all of whom had to travel to the UK after receiving fatal diagnoses in Irish hospitals.
“Babies are precious in our families… It was a time of great excitement,” remembers the Edwards, while the O’Donnells recall “shopping for buggies and cots and everything”.
“We were blissfully unaware that anything could be wrong,” they say in the documentary.
“It was a Tuesday and the scan was at 5.30pm so Dave could come and we wouldn’t miss work,” another woman reveals.
Ruth Bowie, one of the founding members of TFMR, says: “In my gut, I felt there was something wrong. But then I thought I was being paranoid. I’m a nurse and sometimes we think the worst. I was kind of looking forward to being reassured.”
“I went in on my own at 26 weeks. The doctor went silent,” recalls Sarah McGuinness.
Other women recall similar moments.
Straight away, I saw her face. I knew something was wrong.
“The tone changed and the pace changed.”
The sonographer said I needed to call my husband.
“Rightly or wrongly, they started to tell me before John [my husband] came. They told me my child had no brain and no skull.”
‘I’m really sorry it’s bad news guys.’ She went through all the problems – no kidneys and fatal spina bifida, one of the more extreme cases she had seen.
“She’ll die because her heart will give out under the strain of your body, crushing her, basically – or in labour in distress, or if she was to survive those two cases, she would have been born in a lot of pain. They would have the pain team there and the palliative care team to medicate her. She would last minutes at most.”
It’s completely incompatible with life. You need to go home, think about what you need to do and come back to us in the morning. We can talk more about it then.
The couples will tell TDs of their shock at finding out that they would be required to leave the country if they chose a certain treatment path.
The doctor said we had two options – you can continue and we will scan you weekly. Or else you can travel. “
Sarah remembers, “At this stage, I was 26 weeks. I was six and a half months pregnant, I was quite big. My husband just said, ‘So will Sarah get a section then?’ He wasn’t even thinking about his wife being put through labour. I was thinking the same. But she just say, ‘No’. And I went, ‘Induced?’ and she said, ‘no’. ‘As it stands you will have to go to full term’.”
Gaye Edwards adds, “We felt like fugitives… we really did. We didn’t want anyone to know where we were going in case they tried to stop us. We had to leave the jurisdiction obviously. That phrase made it very clear to us that it wasn’t available in Ireland.”
The women and their partners discuss how the travel to the UK heightened the tragedy for them and their families.
We went on the boat at the 2.30am sailing. My partner drove up through the night to Liverpool. He was awake for 24 hours before we got there.
Ruth adds, “We went through checking in, through the security, feeling rotten, going and waiting on the gate and the plane to board. You see business men, people going on weekends away. It just felt so wrong to be in that situation.”
They brought us in to do the procedure where they’ll stop her heart. That was really sad. It made it really definite. This is really happening. They were really kind. They took their time. It was quick in the end. She said, ‘She’s gone now’. That was a hard moment.
Julie remembers, “It’s kind of like a normal labour actually. Which is nice in a way that you get to have a natural birth. I remember being really scared. Little things you hadn’t prepared for. We had a little outfit for him.”
Another touching memory shows a father having a moment with his daughter.
She was born then at nine o’clock in the morning. I still remember that you could hear people going to work, and you could hear the traffic. It was very peaceful when she was born. She was born very suddenly in the end.
I didn’t realise she was so ready to be born. I had sent the midwife out for something, when she came back she was born. Dave had caught her. Which was nice, I suppose, that her Dad had delivered her. He cut her cord.
The Edwards were also allowed some time with their newborn son.
“When Joshua was born and the midwives dressed him. We brought him back to the room in the hospital. We spent time as a family and a meal was brought in to us.
I remember one of the midwives said to us, ‘No matter what anyone says to you, you’re a mammy and a daddy now’. That was really, really important to us.
“We didn’t know what he was going to look like. He was beautiful. He was almost perfect. He was tiny. We spent a few hours with him,” Julie says on the documentary, in tears.
Ruth, who had her procedure carried out in a clinic, had a less empathetic experience.
We were there for about an hour, maybe, and they said, right you can go now. If I had been in my right mind, I would have just said we had nowhere to go because our flight back isn’t until tonight. I said OK but then we had nowhere to go.
“So we just got our taxi into the centre of Birmingham and we literally just wandered the streets and went from coffee shop to coffee shop. I remember at one stage we contemplated going to the cinema so we could sit down somewhere.”
They did everything they could to make it bearable but there came a point we had to leave the hospital and leave him behind. That was the hardest thing.
Many of the women point to the fact that they have other children that they have to leave behind in Ireland to travel for the procedure.
I discharged myself from hospital. I just wanted to get home to my own bed, to my daughter, to my family. Whereas, if you were able to do it in an Irish hospital, you wouldn’t feel the need to rush back as fast.
The documentary also hears from the mothers’ husbands and partners.
“To go back to an awful hotel room in the evening? That was the worst pain,” says James Burke.
Then flying back on a cheap flight from Liverpool to Dublin on a Saturday morning with hen parties celebrating and having a great time while we’re just after going through the worst period of our lives? That was the worst thing ever.
Families also said that they felt an added pain because they had to leave their children in the UK because of restrictions on carrying human remains.
“All our family and friends would have loved a proper ceremony and would loved to have supported us. But that wasn’t really an option,” explains Sarah. “With Liverpool, there is an issue with bringing a body home. All of that really compounds the absolute misery and heartache that couples have to go through.”
Julie and her partner flew back for the cremation of Aidan but, again, had to leave him there
The ashes were posted back to Dublin. We weren’t allowed bring them on the plane and carry them with us.
The Edwards also don’t have a grave for their son.
His cremated remains were delivered by courier a week or two after he was born. A courier van arrived at the door with a jiffy envelope with a cardboard box where his remains are.
“I can’t rest. I even feel I can’t get over my own anger until it is changed because it’s happening to people every week and it’s totally unfair,” says Ruth.
Sarah adds, “There could be 1,000 couples a year that travel. But we can’t get statistics. Because once you leave the care of your maternity hospital, you are not on the records anymore.”
“Government in the last 13 years has consisted of pretty much every major political party,” says Edwards. “They’ve all chosen to ignore this. They’ve all chosen to pretend that it’s not really happening.”
The O’Donnell’s bring up another issue important to the TFMR campaign.
“Abortion is a conversation and there are two sides to it,” they say. “You can understand the pro-life and the other side of it. This is completely separate subject that needs to be given the consideration it deserves.”
Gaye Edwards also highlighted how long this situation has been unchanged.
When I saw the other women from TFMR appear on the Late Late Show and being on the radio and in the press 11 years after we had gone through ours, I felt a certain amount of shame that we hadn’t been able to change things for them.
Clare Daly will introduce her Bill on Friday which would, if passed, enable provision for terminations of pregnancy to be permitted in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities.
Ahead of the Dáil session, Daly and TFMR Ireland have invited TDs and Senators to watch the documentary and to vote for the amendment next Tuesday.
“Many TD’s and Senators across the parties have already expressed support for a change in legislation on this issue,” TFMR has said in a statement.
“While we are grateful that so many politicians have gone ‘on record’ as supportive, expressions of support for change without a willingness to enact that change is actually only adding insult to injury.
“We continue to maintain that this is not a debate about abortion or the right to life of the unborn,” they continue.
“This situation only arises where the right to life cannot be engaged because of a medical condition suffered by the foetus such that it is incompatible with life outside the womb. The proposed amendment includes a provision that two suitably qualified medical professionals (an obstetrician and a perinatologist) jointly certify in good faith that the foetus in question is suffering from a fatal foetal abnormality.
“We feel that this, together with the fact that in reality no parent will undertake a medical or surgical procedure to bring about an end to their pregnancy on the basis of a single medical diagnosis offers sufficient safeguards and is in keeping with the constitutional requirement to protect life ‘as far as practicable’.
“This amendment, if passed, will enable parents to discuss the options available to them with their own medical teams. If they then make the decision to bring the inevitable and tragic end to their pregnancy forward, this choice would be available to them.
“By enacting this Bill, the stigma associated with these decisions will fall away, parents will be able to deliver their babies in Ireland with their own medical teams and with the support of their families around them.
“They will no longer have to ‘flee the state’ feeling like fugitives. They will not have to smuggle their baby’s remains back into Ireland or else leave them behind either to be buried abroad or cremated and delivered to them by courier. Families will be able to have their own funerals which will enable them to grieve normally with the open support of their families, friends and community.”
Unfortunately, this University is really dropping standards, the quality of new lecturing staff is very low, they seem to be hiring people who have qualified with PhDs but no experience. Incredible campus though!
@Joe Conlon: That’s not true the standard of lecturing is excellent. There are new PHD lecturers in most universities but that doesn’t mean they are poor in any way. It’s a fantastic place and it’s a shame to see former staff claiming money they were not supposed to get. That’s if the allegations prove true. The University under its new leadership has done the right thing in looking for a review. It’s a big place with many departments and many qualifications offered and all are of the highest calibre.
@Joe Conlon: That sounds like a very broad assessment and I doubt it’s true. Mind narrowing it down to the department you have experience with because it certainly isn’t true for mine.
@Catherine Sims: we will have to disagree on that, I suppose it does depend on discipline but there has been a significant drop in standards, education is a commodity now and is being reflected as such in this unit.
@Joe Conlon: It has the 2nd highest employability in the country after Trinity and is in the top 150 globally, I’m not sure what you’re using to measure this standard drop.
http://www.ul.ie/international/ul-ranks-highly-qs-global-employability-ranking
@Rochelle: perhaps Joe didn’t do well and wants to blame the lecturers ???
@Catherine Sims: Perhaps he didn’t even get in!
@Rochelle: My own experience, I studied there as an undergrad and got my master’s there back in the day and it was truly excellent, I decided to study further on a part time basis recently and simply found the people over the programme did not know their material at all. By the way, if you have the time read Ellen Hazelkorns books on rankings and that will make it clear on why these rankings that you just referenced mean nothing.
@Catherine Sims: I have done very well thank you, I even lectured there myself for 5 years but am now working in the private sector. However, with your negative response I suspect that it’s you that has ended up in a dead-end job?
@Chef, you don’t even have a qualify to get into University, once you are 23 you can apply for any course in any college that you wish, and if you have enough money, universities service the elites even better. Another individual with a chip on your shoulder I suspect?
@Joe Conlon: In which department? My objection is why you’re tarnishing an entire University for what seems to be an observation you’ve made in your own department.
@Catherine Sims: Catherine if the lecturing staff are confined primarily people with PHD’s and not enough people with experience would he have a point?
@Catherine Sims: if the above point is valid (which it is), why would you try and suggest a possible slander and ridicule to his character based of a journal comment and having no knowledge? Would that make you a petulant child? Asking for a friend
All universities are certainly guilty of a particular problem: making certain that people don’t get employed long enough to give permanency.
Now, there’s a few fair arguments on that: Lecturers fresh from PhD or within a few years from their research tend to be more up to date and permanence can facilitate complacency.
But there are certainly counterpoints on that too: PhDs are very specific and with a narrow focus, if you’re in a place and proving yourself for a decade then it’s hard to argue someone is complacent.
As with all jobs, minimum expectations should be met. During my time at UL I had only 2 lecturers I had a problem with – one a complete waster (anyone who studied to be a tech teacher in UL will know EXACTLY who this is) and the other someone I just fundementally disagreed with but can recognise that they were certainly fit for the job.
The same goes for the TA’s who were IMO nothing less than excellent.
As for excessive expenses – I would be surprised if questions shouldn’t be asked of a lot of universities on that.
What gets me about things like that are that in a static way, it should be pretty obvious where there should be questions asked. Things aren’t static of course – blips in funding and workload occur. But over a period of years it should be pretty reasonable to look at ratios and be readily able to explain any deviation from what you would expect to be a pretty reasonable cycle.
And the whistle blowers who exposed the financial malpractice within UL have been treated disgracefully ever since. Smear campaigns have been carried out by certain individuals.
@Colm O’Sullivan: it wouldnt be Ireland if it were any different
Great University and great Campus.
Unfortunately he mentioned ‘stakeholders’ – that’s when I glaze over.
@eastsmer #IRExit: You do know that isn’t the same thing as “stockholders”?
Everyone working and attanding and studying at UL are stakeholders.
It is interesting to note that UL point blank refused to alert or inform former aeronautical engineering students, who had work experience placements in the Irish Army Air Corps, that they were unnecessarily & dangerously exposed to highly toxic chemicals during the placement.
Over approximately 20 years scores of UL students were exposed with some now suffering illnesses common to exposed Air Corps & civillian airbase personnel.
Toxic chemicals they were exposed to without PPE include Benzene, Cresylic Acid, Dichloromethane, Hydrofluoric Acid, Isocyanates, Methyl Ethyl Ketone, nHexane, Toluene, Trichloroethylene and Xylene as well as many different Hexavalent Chromium compounds.
See http://www.accas.info for more.
@Chemical Brothers: is it long term or short term exposure that causes these health issues? For example, alcohol and fags in the long term can causes cancer. In the short term the body can heal and eliminate the toxins.
@Bairéid Rísteard: Very long term. For example Dichloromethane, with an allowable TWA of 50ppm, was measured in ERF in August 1995 at 175ppm. After this was discovered staff were left to rot in this small building resulting in the deaths of at least 5 personnel. 2 x Non Hodgkins 1 x Brain Tumour, 1 x Crohns, 1 x Brain Tumour, 1 x Heart Failure. There was a further non fatal heart attack and a non fatal Hodgkins. All except 2x Non Hodgkins were suffered by young men in their 20s / early 30s. No one was issued with any PPE.
http://www.accas.info/?page_id=142
Note the State Claims Agency (aka NTMA/NAMA) claims personnel were not exposed to dangerous chemicals whatsoever.
@Bairéid Rísteard: Sorry meant to say staff we left to rot in this location for a further 12 years.
Air Quality reports from 1995 & 1997 were ordered destroyed by Air Corps Health & Safety management in 2006 when a stsff member went yellow with a liver injury. Similar liver injuries (Toxic Hepatitis) occurred in Jan/Feb of this year through lack of chemical & PPE training.
@Chemical Brothers: that’s shocking, and very sad for those men and their families. I was recently in a paint hangar (not as a painter), and the ppe standards were abysmal. Seems like history is repeating itself.
@Bairéid Rísteard: Unfortunately this gets a lot worse.
Adult body count has recently reached 20 for serving & former personnel whilst 5 children of personnel are also dead through a combination of cancer & congenital defects.
In recent weeks we have also learned of at least 7 cases of autism/autism spectrum disorder amongst personnel’s children as well as 1 x Cri-Du-Chat syndrome, 2 x trisomy 21 and 1 x XYY syndrome.
Exposed chemicals were carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic and are doing exactly as they said on the tin
Irish Army Air Corps only started to attempt to comply with 1989 chemical legislation in 2016 but it appears to be only a box ticking exercise with little extra resources on the ground and little effort to enforce a safety culture change.
White Collar Crime is rampant all over the place…..bring in CAB….
A great time to release all this bad news to the media, will get lost in a few hours in Garda Scandals ,brexit and Endexit.
Be interesting to see what former president Dr Ed Walsh will say. He surely will be on Newstalk and will blame the secondary school teachers!!
Second big fire in two days in Limerick . This time in the Raheen industrial estate. Do we have an arsonist on the loose I wonder ?
@Catherine Sims: No we don`t , two seperate unrelated incidents
@Tony O Dwyer: And a completely seperate story.
have your say