Baby Christopher’s parents should not have had to wait so long for an apology |
It took the HSE six years, eight months and 22 days to issue an unequivocal apology for the death of baby Christopher Kiely, son of Rebecca Price and Patrick Kiely.
The HSE announced an independent review into how Christopher, a perfectly healthy and much-loved baby, was aborted after being wrongly diagnosed with Trisomy 18.
This condition is often described as a fatal foetal abnormality, a dehumanising term. The National Standards for Bereavement Care following Pregnancy Loss and Perinatal Death do not use it. They prefer the term life-limiting condition, not least because each so-called fatal foetal abnormality has rare instances of long-term survivors.
Section 11 of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 governs abortions where there is “a condition affecting the foetus that is likely to lead to the death of the foetus either before, or within 28 days of, birth”. It specifies that two doctors must examine the patient, one an obstetrician and the other “a medical practitioner of a relevant speciality”.
In baby Christopher’s case, a geneticist was the obvious relevant medical speciality. The parents assert that only one doctor examined Rebecca, and a geneticist was not consulted before that doctor advised an abortion.
As a result, there was a catastrophic misinterpretation of the implications of a non-invasive prenatal test (NIPT) result suggesting high risk, and of the first part of another diagnostic test, called Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS).
The parents allege that