Dublin Vigil

Undaunted by the high winds and the persistent rain, at least 150 people – old and young (mostly young) and children and babies – braved the elements to take part in the Candlelight Vigil for Baby C, on Sunday, 22 November.

As happened on the occasion of the Rally for Life last July the rain actually stopped for the duration of the vigil – up to 5 o’clock.
The participants lined the two sides (and beyond) beneath the colonnade of the General Post Office in Dublin, holding flickering candles and large colour placards showing, for instance, an unborn child with the message: ‘She’s a child – not a choice’.

It being Sunday afternoon there was a constant flow of people walking past, through the rows of placards and candles. It was quite an impressive sight – nobody could miss it!

Mons. Phillip Reilly in London

The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants have announced that the founder of the organisation, Monsignor Phillip J. Reilly, will be in England on 4 and 5 December next.
On Friday, 4 December, Monsignor Reilly will give a talk on: Reasons for Hope in this Epic Struggle for Life, at 7.30 pm, at St. James Church Hall, Spanish Place,
22 George Street, London W1U 3QY.

On Saturday, 5 December, a Helpers’ Vigil will take place from Ealing Abbey to Mattock Lane. Details are as follows:

9.15 am – Mass at Ealing Abbey (Charlbury Grove, W5 2DY)
9.55 am – Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament
10.05 am – Prayerful and peaceful procession to Marie Stopes abortion centre,
Mattock Lane, Ealing
11.45 am – Return procession to Ealing Abbey, with prayers and hymns
12.15 pm – Break for tea and get-together – please bring packed lunch!

Further information on directions and locations is available from:
The Helpers of God’s Precious Infants, P.O. Box 26601, London N14 7WH
Phone: (London) 020 8 252 3109. E-mail: info@hgpi.co.uk. Web: www.hgpi.co.uk

Women's Group opposes CEDAW

The World Union of Catholic Women's Organisations has written to the President of the United Nations to oppose the Convention on the Elimination of Violence Against Women. President Karen Hurley urged the UN to "take concrete actions to protect women and children, innocent victims of violence" but warned:

"CEDAW is being misused as a tool to promote violence [against] women and girls, mothers and babies, in the form of legal access to abortion on demand to put pressure on countries worldwide to legalize and fund abortion, promote contraception, medically assisted reproduction for same sex unions and other immoral acts in defiance of God's natural law."

Response to the Irish Law Reform Commission’s report on Advance Care Directives

The Irish Government in September 2008 published an outline for a mental capacity bill and this was followed earlier this year by the law reform commission report on advance care directives.

An analysis of the Law reform Commission proposals carried out by the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute warns about the dangers of advance care directives as evidenced in other jurisdictions. We include below some of their comments.

Advance care directives are an ethically flawed and potentially dangerous response to the problem of patient fears regarding end of life treatment and care.

• Advance care directives rely on an exaggerated view of patient autonomy, encouraging patients to make life and death decisions outside of a healthcare setting.

• This means that patients are encouraged to make decisions:
o without the benefit of medical advice,
o without assessment of their capacity to make such decisions,
o without protection from the influence or coercion of third parties,
o and without subjective experience of pain and other symptoms that future medical treatment might address.

Advance care directives are therefore in contravention of the principle of informed consent.

The bottom line is that:
• The principles and practice of good medical decision-making in the best interests of the patient are the best response to advance care directives, and to the original problem of patient fears about end-of-life treatment.
• The draft bill should be opposed.
• If it cannot be defeated, the draft bill should be amended in significant ways

The full executive summary and complete report can be viewed on the European Life Network website

Irish Medical Council Ethical guidelines

The Irish Medical Council, which is the regulatory body for doctors in Ireland, has recently published the 7th Edition of its Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Medical Practitioners. This Guide covers many areas of medical practice, including ‘Assisted human reproduction’, ‘Abortion’, ‘End of life care’, ‘Conscientious objection’, etc.

The Life Institute (Ireland) says that the new guidelines, referring to the X-case judgment, reflect neither the correct current legal position, nor the views of the majority of Irish doctors, and that a political agenda is being pushed through the Medical Council by political appointees. Deirdre Madden, who was appointed to the Council by Mary Harney (Minister for Health and Children), was instrumental in pushing for embryonic stem cell research in University College Cork recently. Although she is not a medical doctor (she is a law lecturer), she was the Chair of the Ethics Working Group which was responsible for drawing up the new guidelines.

Among other concerns about some of the content of the guidelines, the Life Institute draws attention to the clause stating that: ‘In exceptional circumstances, a patient under 16 might seek to make a healthcare decision on their own without the knowledge or consent of their parents.’ The Life Institute asks if this might refer to the giving of the morning-after pill to young girls without their parents’ consent?

One of the clauses under the ‘End of life care’ states: ‘You must not participate in the deliberate killing of a patient by active means.’ This sounds reassuring, but in the light of recent recommendation issued by the Law Reform Commission here, and the ongoing consultations in relation to the ‘End of Life in Ireland’ forum, it is advisable to stay alert at all times!

Under ‘Assisted human reproduction’ it is stated: ‘If you offer donor programmes to patients, you must consider the biological difficulties involved and pay particular attention to the source of the donated material. Such donations should be altruistic and non-commercial. You should keep accurate records for future reference.’
The ‘donated material’ ? Apart altogether from the wrongfulness of IVF, where is the respect for human dignity – is a child to be regarded as a commodity?

The President of the Medical Council, in his address at the annual dinner of the Council in 2007, said: ‘From my earliest days as a medical student in Cork, through every day of my subsequent training, it was ingrained into me that medicine starts and centres on the doctor-patient relationship. To every medical practitioner amongst us here, it is a basic axiom that the good of our patient is our moral compass. The glue in this relationship is trust. It has underpinned medicine and found expression since the Hippocratic Oath of the fourth century BC. ’

To my knowledge, that is the only reference to the Hippocratic Oath that appears on the Medical Council website.