Andrea wrote about this story as it was happening. The inquest results are in – as reported over at MercatorNet:

Savita Halappanavar died from septic shock resulting from an E.coli bacterial infection which had entered her bloodstream via the urinary tract. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has attributed most of the deaths of pregnant women in the UK with a baby under 24 weeks gestation, from sepsis, as being due to “substandard care… in particular a lack of recognition of the signs of sepsis and a lack of guidelines on the investigation and management of genital track sepsis”…

Savita Halappanavar first presented at University College Hospital Galway on the afternoon of Sunday, October 21, with backache but she was sent home following an examination. Savita had a history of back problems. She returned later that evening having experienced blood loss and was admitted. A blood sample was taken.

Crucially, the results of the blood tests, which showed an elevated white blood cell count indicating that an infection was present, were never followed up. The inquest heard that though the results were processed almost instantaneously, the first time they were accessed was some 24 hours later by an unidentified member of staff, and later by Dr Katherine Astbury, the consultant in charge of her care, at 11.24 on the Wednesday morning. This was five hours after she had been diagnosed with sepsis and after her condition had rapidly deteriorated.

Speaking at the inquest, Dr Astbury stated that if she had had access to the blood results earlier, she would have taken measures to terminate Savita’s pregnancy on the Monday or the Tuesday. However, she had been judging Mrs Halappanavar on the basis of clinical signs only and it had been her opinion that Savita was “distressed, but not unwell”.

It seems like hospital staff committed one mistake after another, from failing to monitor Savita to taking fluid samples in the wrong tubes, which prevented the lab from running the appropriate tests.

Did her survival hinge on a termination?

Opinion is divided as to whether or not a termination would helped Savita. The presence of an infection is a contraindication to surgical intervention, because the clamps and forceps required in a procedure risk further infection.

Furthermore Savita’s unborn child was not the source of her bacterial infection, the uterus and membranes being a sterile environment. Use of the drug misoprostol to contract the uterus and expedite delivery would not have guaranteed that the process would have been any swifter nor ruled out the necessity for surgery.

Conservative management is the preferred clinical approach in cases of spontaneous miscarriage. In the absence of obvious signs of infection, masked by her painkillers, it is not surprising that the medical staff decided that intervention was unnecessary. With ruptured membranes and a dilated cervix, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that nature would soon take its course. The outcome for the baby would have been tragically inevitable, but there would have been no long term ill-effects for the mother.

Susan Martinuk on how the “private choice” of killing oneself impacts all of society:

So there it is — the classic left-wing argument against almost everything. Not based on facts or statistics, or what has happened in other countries, but on emotional narratives that are loaded with words like compassion, “I feel,” and claims of “my body, “my choice” and the ignorant and naive assumption that this “will only affect me.”

In sharp contrast, the reality is that giving individuals the right to die “on their own terms” has plenty of public implications. First of all, it involves the assistance of another and the assurance that society will not stand in the way. Therefore, it is very much a public, not private, act. By giving doctors the right to help their patients die, the legalization of euthanasia would also influence the kind of medical care that the rest of society receives. We currently have a medical profession that is dedicated to supporting life, and is not compromised by some within it who will happily help you to die. This is societal progress; in the time of Hippocrates, a healer/doctor could just as easily kill you as heal you, depending on the desires of those paying the bill.

We’ve witnessed how the abortion “choice” has impacted North American society and how it has devalued the lives of the young. Let’s watch how this choice, if legalized, will devalue the lives of the sick and the elderly.

Brian Lilley recently interviewed Lila Rose on the Hermit Gosnell trial. The comments on when human life begins are especially interesting. We’re on such a sickening slippery slope…and we’re sliding down and down and down…

As you’ll remember, Andrea was disappointed that pictures weren’t immediately available at press time. Here he is.

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Andrea adds: Faye alerted me to this important post via email, but since I was at a business dinner, and didn’t want to swoon abruptly in front of near strangers, I thought it wise to wait to look. Fortunately, he’s really not my type.

From Wesley J. Smith,

Remember when they said “only” excess embryos would be used in research? It was always bunk, and now an article in the New England Journal of Medicine has called for allowing embryos to be made to order and sold like a corn crop.

What would justify this form of nascent human trafficking?

The lovely Stephanie Gray has us rethinking terms this week:

Any woman who has never been pregnant is a mother-to-be.  By virtue of our femininity, we women hold within us the potential for biological motherhood, but in the absence of conception, motherhood is a future possibility, not a present reality.  “Mother-to-be” speaks of what is to come.  “Mother” speaks of what is now.  After all, “bride-to-be” indicates a woman isn’t yet a bride.  Or, what would we call a student who’s going to be a lawyer one day, but is not one yet? A “lawyer-to-be.”  So what would we call a woman who’s going to be a mother one day, but not a mother yet? A “mother-to-be.”

To be clear, then, a pregnant woman is not—I repeat: NOT—a mother-to-be.  A pregnant woman is a mother.  Birth does not endow motherhood.  Fertilization does.  When a woman becomes pregnant, her status is permanently changed.  Whether her child survives or is miscarried, aborted, or adopted, her status as mother never disappears.

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Andrea adds: I am a supporter of Stephanie and CCBR. That fact that I don’t like this article doesn’t alter that. But I don’t like this article/concept, nor do I find it to be particularly logical. Her main point is that pregnant women are not “mothers-to-be,” but rather, they are mothers. Yes, agreed. It does not follow then that all women are in point of fact, mothers to be. Ice is not water in waiting if it lives in Antarctica, to make an off the cuff comparison. If someone asks me if I’m single and I say, “No! I’m a ‘wife-to-be,'” they might (rightly) think I was off my rocker.

Claiming all women are “mothers-to-be” regardless of what they are right now detracts both from the women who are not mothers, and possibly from mothering itself.

Students of law are not lawyers in waiting. They might flunk out, or decide they prefer another career path. Anything can happen.

This concept might also be considered terribly insensitive to women who are infertile–desperately wanting to be mothers but finding for one reason or another that they can’t be. Who, in that circumstance, wants to be told they actually are a “mother-to-be”? Fan.Tas.Tic.

Finally, we can marvel at the new life created in the embryo, right at conception.  We can and we should. We all started there. It’s an amazing miracle. But mothers (and aunties and uncles and good friends and grandparents) long to cradle their newborns in their arms and welcome them into the world. To see them. And we can’t pretend this is a distinction that doesn’t matter.

My two cents. I welcome the thoughts of others.

They are great conversation starters. I’ve had some good exchanges with people about abortion because they had no idea baby girls could be aborted simply because they’re girls and they were horrified by that fact.

Because of a media request, I read Speaker Sheer’s full ruling. I’d encourage you to take a few minutes to look it over. It’s short at eight pages and is a heartening read.

In making their arguments in this case, several Members have correctly pointed out the fundamental importance of freedom of speech for Members as they carry out their duties.

Read more at the National Post:

Andrew Scheer, the Speaker of the House of Commons, has made a potentially landmark ruling on MPs’ freedom of speech that could stem the flow of power from the backbench to party hierarchies, in defiance of the wishes his party leader, Stephen Harper. It was, in all likelihood, not a decision that was made lightly…

Mr. Scheer said members are free to seek the floor at any time. “Ultimately, it is up to each individual member to decide how frequently he or she wishes to seek the floor, knowing that being recognized by the Speaker is not always a guaranteed proposition.”

He acknowledged that members who complain they are rarely on their party’s list have a “legitimate concern.” An analysis of members’ statements, for example, suggests that 10% of Conservative backbenchers delivered 28% of the members’ statements in the last year, with Quebec MP Jacques Gourde giving 35 statements (mostly pushing party messages) and Saskatchewan MP Maurice Vellacott delivering just two.

On a lighter note, John Ivison made me laugh this morning. I grew up watching Star Trek as a kid because my parents loved it. If you’ve ever watched it, you know what he’s getting at:

But make no mistake, if Mr. Scheer had allowed the status quo to stand, the last vestiges of independence on the backbenches in the House of Commons would have disappeared. The convention that the party whips dictate who says what during Question Period and members’ statements would have been confirmed — the status of backbenchers as disposable as that of Star Trek redshirt security officers on landing-party duty.

I’m not familiar with this writer – I followed a series of links and ended up at this blog post. He predicts how much of society will come to accept infanticide as normal and acceptable, just as it has with abortion:

Campaigners  for infanticide will make their case in a gradual way. First, they won’t call it “infanticide” (killing infants) but “post-birth abortion.” The reasons are obvious. The word “infanticide” strikes horror into our hearts. But “post-birth abortion” makes it sound like the termination is simply an extension of abortion, which we are culturally adjusted to. Yet the terminology is grossly inaccurate. You can “abort” something in process like a pregnancy, but killing an infant is not an abortion, its an execution. Second, campaigners will advocate the infants born with terminal illnesses should be euthanized so as to prevent the infant’s suffering. That is the compassionate thing to do! Third, then the campaign will shift to children with chronic disabilities and all kinds of generative diseases and then move onto to any minor defect like cleft palates. Planned Parenthood will parade teary-eyed parents wishing they could have terminated their sick child either in utero or soon after birth to prevent the child’s suffering and their own. Fourth, then radical feminists will tell us that women will never be truly liberated until they are given the right to terminate their own infants. Fifth, we will be told that the only reason for not believing in infanticide is that you are a religious whack job. Well you get the picture by now.

Some might think that I’m paranoid on this issue, but I think time will prove that I am more likely to be prophetic. The building blocks for the debate are already here and it is time to get our stuff together on this.

As you know, we’re hearing a number of these arguments already being made, as I blogged about here and here.