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| Ireland on the Edge |
On Thursday
my GP took one look at my throat, squeezed my neck, I screamed, he said ‘yes,
glands are doing their job, pharyngitis.’
Great, I
think, I’m going to get real medicine to get rid of this 4 day affliction.
‘I don’t
think it’s an infection, it looks viral.’
Pleading
eyes.
‘But I’ll
give you a basic antibiotic; if it gets worse in two days, take them.’
Straight to
the chemist, I think.
‘You must
be very run down,’ he says.
I decide I’ll broach the subject not mentioned in
eleven years.
‘Yes, maybe
I am, have you seen the… papers?’
‘Very brave
of you,’ he muses.
I told him how
I’d listened to presentations from GP’s at the Oireachtas hearings, and a GP in
a ‘Doctors for Choice’ briefing. I said how it was obvious that the GP was the
first port of call when a woman thought she was pregnant, crisis or not. We remembered
how it was in that very surgery that I sat and got the good news confirmed that
I was pregnant with Son 1 and 2.
‘Yes, we
are the ones that see the mother first, talk about how she feels, make the
obstetrician referrals, amazing how we’re not included in this.’
He meant
the list of specialists designated to assess, approve, confirm, when a suicidal
pregnant woman presents. Can’t see it working myself.
‘I don’t
remember any discussion here at the time about your case,’ he said, perplexed.
In
hindsight, it might have been better to have discussed it in the surgery, to
have at least garnered some sympathy. But by the time I got the diagnosis,
there were three obstetricians unable to help. Having been told by a barrister
friend to tell nobody that I decided to travel, I actually feared telling my
GP. At that time, I imagined the police being called to restrain me from
leaving my house. Where I'm still in bed with nothing to do but write and finish a book review.
In the week
that we had the crèche exposé and subsequent handwringing and emergency debating
in the Dail, I couldn’t help see the glaring hypocrisy of reactive regulation.
Despite the fact HSE people are paid to carry out the function, it failed, multiple times
and places. So the government reacted when it hit them in the face, committees will be set up, reports will be commissioned. One creche was given a million euro in State funding last year, it's simple enough make them spend it on actual trained staff and a few Ikea cots wouldn't break the bank.
The same week Minister of Health Reilly said it was 'extremely difficult' to include FFA (fatal foetal abnormality) a current, live issue, in the legislation, with a Human Rights case to support it.
Instead it is legislating for the X case twenty-one years later because the
spotlight fell on Ireland in the wake of the death of a woman in Galway left to
die. The legislation clearly has no corollary effect. Her terminally ill baby made her sick, but its
heartbeat took precedence over hers. This legislation won’t affect women in her
position or mine, or other women like us.
So, I wrote
another letter to the paper.
They rang
me and said it was too long. ‘I thought so,’ I said sadly.
In the end,
they wanted it in Opinion, same page as John Waters. Under Water I was. And
they found this old photo of me from an environmental planning article I’d
written in the same year all this happened. They said the photo was good; I had
to trust them on that. In fact, it was great, it had this long, dark shadow
behind me, just as I’d described the stigma of secrecy since 2002.
What I didn’t
expect were the comments, shouldn’t have read them last night, some were very,
very decent, out of about 220, 95% I’d say were supportive. I don’t know if it’s
such a good idea to have people argue with each other about my private
decision. But if I put it out there, maybe that’s my fault. No wonder I didn’t
go public when I was raw.
There was
only one man I wanted to scream at, he said something like ‘She is still
suffering from a moral dilemma,’ he has removed his post, so I couldn’t check
it today.. hmm.
There is
none now nor has there ever been a moral dilemma. Taking care of my two sons in
the winter of 2002, getting them to school, watching their matches, doing the
homework, mattered. They stood beside me at the burial of their baby brother in
a quiet rural cemetery, listening to prayers and holding hands. No dilemma
whatsoever.
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