Yes You Can, No You Can't

No you can't, the Health Service Executive told the seventeen-year-old girl in their care. Referred to as 'Miss D", the girl in question comes from a broken home, and was taken from her alcoholic mother for her own good. Not that the HSE did much better for her, because the young lady is now four months pregnant. Sadly, the fetus is anencephalic and the prognosis is grim. If Miss D should manage to carry to term, the baby will live for three days at the most.

Considering the ultimate outcome, Miss D wants to go to England for an abortion. That's the typical procedure in cases of anencephaly, a neural tube defect in which the skull fails to fully form, and large parts of the brain never develop. Of course, as Miss D is an Irish lass, she has to cross the Irish Sea for treatment. Can't be performing abortions in Ireland, even for medical risk cases like this one.

No you can't, the Health Service Executive told Miss D. You'll not be travelling out of the country, unless, of course, you can prove that you'd kill yourself otherwise. A suicide risk would make all the difference to the HSE. But Miss D isn't suicidal at all. She's distraught, as one might expect, knowing that the baby that she wants is so deformed that it cannot possibly live. We've warned the gardai, the HSE told her, and you'd best not even try to board a ferry.

Yes you can, says Donal O'Donnell, speaking on behalf of the Attorney General. The HSE has no legal power at all to order An Garda Siochana to restrain Miss D, just because the HSE happens to have a care order. But the HSE only wants what's best, says their solicitor Gerry Durcan, just looking after her welfare. And she should be looked at by a psychiatrist as well. That will make all the difference, won't it, to have a psychiatrist treat the mother of an anencephalic fetus. Will it miraculously change the outcome? What possible good can a psychiatrist do in this situation? Cover the HSE's arse, most likely, by producing a diagnosis of 'suicide risk' so HSE can put a good face on a bad situation.

This is not the first time that HSE has been asked to pay for an abortion in England, in a case of fetal malformation inconsistent with life outside the womb. Why now, when the precedent has been set, is HSE calling in the gardai to prevent Miss D from equal treatment? As the HSE will not comment on individual cases, we're left in the dark.

Mr. Justice Liam McKechnie (of Dr. Foy fame...my but he's busy these days) has granted leave for the case to be heard, and he's put a rush on it. Gestation does not conform to the court's schedule, after all, and time is running out. Tomorrow, then, HSE will try to argue that they meant well, while the State will argue that the HSE is talking out of its collective arse. There'll be backtracking, hemming and hawing, and Miss D will make her way to England before much longer. In the process, the abortion debate will be visited once again, and once again, nothing will change.