Posted by: gommon on: January 15, 2009
There was a very interesting and saddening item on Woman’s Hour (BBC Radio 4) yesterday. Two years ago Nicaragua’s parliament introduced a blanket ban on abortion, making it a crime for a woman to end a pregnancy or have what is called a therapeutic abortion, there are no exceptions for victims of rape and incest or even when a woman’s life is in danger.
The programme can be heard at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/05/2009_03_wed.shtml
I really don’t want to get into an abortion debate – we all have our own opinion, and as a midwife my professional stance has to be that it is a personal decision and my job is to support a woman in her choices, however the programme made for difficult listening when I heard of (probably) hundreds of young women dying from pregnancy related conditions.
Also in the news this week was the sad story of a woman who died as a result of a brain haemorrhage. The woman was 25 weeks pregnant and although she was “brain dead” the doctors managed to keep her artificially ventilated until they were able to perform a caesarean section to deliver her baby daughter. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7824462.stm
