The Irish Independent reported March 5th that A REVIEW of maternal
deaths, spanning 60 years in the country's main maternity hospitals, has found
no recorded case of a woman taking her own life because she was pregnant,
writes Eilish O'Regan.
The review was led by Mater Hospital psychiatrist Professor
Patricia Casey, who said every death from 1950 to 2011 was examined.
During those decades, five women, who were pregnant or had
given birth, were recorded as committing suicide but these were linked to
mental illness.
The study involved examining the reports of the masters of
Holles Street, the Rotunda and Coombe hospitals and involved more than one
million women.
Prof Casey said: "It is important to note that in the
context of the present debate, the records cover a period that begins almost 20
years before the liberalisation of the British abortion laws in 1967.
"This makes it much harder to claim that suicidal
pregnant women in the first part of the period under examination were going to
Britain for abortions. It demonstrates that suicide in pregnancy is extremely
rare," she added.
