Eire: Influence of Hospital Ethics Committees (1992)

Barcode (ID): 03B0117274                                               

Main Search Term and Keywords: Abortion, Contraception

Date of Broadcast: 30th June 1992

Clip Duration: 8 min 42 seconds

Scientific Content Rating

Ethical Content Rating

Usefulness for Teaching Bioethics

A great clip (even though it is long) on both sides of the ethics debate within hospitals

Description: A report on the debate in Ireland over the role of Catholic dominated hospital committees who some believe prevent treatments that contravene religious ethics.

• 7 years Brendon Hodgers is trying to find how his wife and baby were killed after his wife was found to have cancer
• They were allegedly refused cancer treatment due to pregnancy
• ‘They ceased treatment due to pregnancy diagnoses, they wouldn’t perform x-rays, there seemed to be some kind of ethical dispute going on’
• Pain killing drugs were not given to her – ‘she was literally screaming with pain’
• Fuzzy section due to copyright
• Not isolated case whereby within a year of giving birth, the women has died from cancer later
• Father Noonan is one of the few that will give an interview on the ethics within Ireland’s public hospitals
• ‘The ethics committees are compromised of different groups of people, no ethics committee would deny treatment just because a woman was pregnant, if she needs it she get it’
• Mary Henry, consultant Physician – ‘ethics committees should have no role in things like sterilisation operations’
• Sterilisation is available but frowned upon
• Catholic church imposes the ethics committee on the hospital
• Sterilisation is not allowed simply because the couple do not want any more children
• Campaign against separation of church and state – ‘we have a high birth rate and this is responsible for our relative poverty and high emigration – to argue against contraception and abortion is nonsense’
• Brendon Hodgers – ‘i dont want Sheila death to be in vain’

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