John Crown (Independent) | Oireachtas source

No other interpretation can be put forward for this fear that a non evidence-based practice will become widely pursued other than the fact that doctors, uniquely in this circumstance, will suspend their sense of obligation and rigour in interpreting data. We are not talking about doctors flown in to some little fly by night clinic. We are talking about people who are consultants. Trust me, I have said often enough in here that one of the several strengths in our mediocre health system is the people who work in it. We have the best trained nurses and doctors in the world. At senior consultant level in all of the specialties we have an unbelievable winnowing process and only people who have gone through an extraordinary level of selection get to a position where he or she can make decisions. We need to trust them.

What then is the problem? As Senator Gilroy has pointed out, maternal death is extraordinarily rare in all western countries. I stand to be corrected on the following. There have been years in Ireland, and during the ones that I have been here, when there were no maternal deaths in the whole country. None. It is impossible to make the kind of statistical assumptions one needs to make to define an evidence basis for a procedure like this. We have clear evidence - I am sorry but I have tried to stay away from the sad case of Savita Halappanavar and I understand the nuance of the multiple factors that contributed to her tragic death. However, one thing must be said. It was partly an attempt by politicians, judges etc. to give an opinion on what would be the right medical care meant that led to a group of doctors who, I believe, would otherwise have interpreted what would have been the evidence basis feeling constrained from doing so. On the Monday of that poor lady's illness I believe that most doctors, in most parts of the world, would have said she someone who was having an inevitable miscarriage, that the pregnancy could not survive, that the foetus or baby and her precious first born baby would be dead within a matter of hours or days because it could not be saved when the cervix was dilating. I do not want to go into all of the details but Members will know what I mean. It could not have been stopped. The decision was not made to do the manoeuvre which might have resulted in a lesser risk of a potentially fatal infection for her. The understanding of the doctors, on the basis of the legal ambiguity in which they worked, was that they might be breaking the law. That was that, clear and simple. I am not saying that was the only reason. I ask all of those who have told us about evidence-based medicine to please understand that if the doctors had been left alone to practise evidence-based medicine without the fear that was imposed on them by medical amateurs, through a faulty legislative process, the situation may well have been avoided.

I must saying something else because I do not believe that I will get a chance to say it later.