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An Irish midwife has apologised for telling a terminally ill patient she could not have an abortion in Ireland because “it’s a Catholic country”.
Ann Maria Burke admitted she made the remark to Savita Halappanavar last October but insisted that it was meant it in kindness.
She was testifying at an inquest into the death of Mrs Halappanavar, who died of a heart attack caused by septicaemia due to E.coli four days after she delivered a dead baby daughter.
Burke, the senior midwife at University Hospital Galway, in West Ireland, said she used the reference to Catholic teaching after Mrs Halappanavar said she was Hindu and she would have ended her pregnancy in her home country of India.
“I did mention it’s a Catholic country. I didn’t mention it in a hurtful context. It was in a conversation we had,” Burke told the coroner.
Burke said in hindsight her remark “sounded bad” and was something she regretted.
She said the statement had “come out the wrong way and I’m sorry that I said it”.
“I was trying to be as broad and explanatory as I could. It was nothing to do with medical care at all,” she said.
The coroner, Dr Ciaran McLoughlin, said the remark had gone around the world and he said public hospitals in Ireland did not follow religious dogma of any persuasion.
Mrs Halappanavar’s husband, Praveen Halappanavar, had earlier told the inquest that a consultant obstetrician, Dr Katherine Astbury, had said an abortion was not possible because Ireland was a Catholic country.
But a lawyer for Astbury said the consultant would “categorically deny” ever making any reference to Ireland being a “Catholic country”.
But Astbury acknowledged there was a “systems failure” in the care given to Mrs Halappanavar.
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