Abortion in Ireland: committee votes for constitutional change

A committee set up to deliberate on Ireland’s strict abortion regime has voted for the constitutional rules to be changed.

The Citizens’ Assembly, a randomly selected group of 99 members of the public chaired by the supreme court judge Mary Laffoy, met on Saturday to discuss the contentious issue for the final time.

At the heart of the assembly’s work is examining the eighth amendment to the republic’s constitution, which gives equal right to life to the mother and the foetus. In the first of a series of votes by members on whether to advise constitutional reform, the assembly voted 87% in favour of change.

A series of other votes are being held over the weekend to determine the specific changes the assembly will recommend.

Since 2014 in Ireland, a pregnancy can be terminated under the Protection Of Life During Pregnancy Act if there is a risk to the woman’s life, including from suicide. The procedure can involve a medical or surgical termination, or an early delivery by induction or caesarean section.

There has been a strong campaign for women to be allowed to have an abortion in cases of rape and incest, or if there has been a fatal foetal abnormality diagnosis.

Figures from the Health Service Executive showed 26 terminations were carried out under the legislation in 2014 and again in 2015. In both years, 14 were because of a risk to the life of the mother from physical illness, three in relation to suicide and nine following emergencies arising from physical illness.

In 2013, Amanda Mellet became the first of three Irish women to formally ask the UN to denounce the prohibition on abortions in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities as “cruel and inhumane”.

Mellet and her husband took their case to the UN’s human rights committee after they were forced to go to England to terminate the pregnancy.

Last year the UNHRC ruled that by forcing Mellet to leave Ireland to have an abortion, the state had inflicted trauma and distress on her.

For the first time in its history, Ireland compensated Mellet as a result of the ruling. Under the country’s laws, if Mellet and the other two women had remained in the republic they would have been forced to give birth to stillborn babies.

On Saturday, Judge Laffoy said the result of the vote provided a mandate for changing the status quo and, if implemented by the government, it would require a constitutional referendum, the Irish Times reported.

Opening the session, she praised the commitment of the assembly members.

“This exercise in deliberative democracy allowed us to withdraw from the polarising perspectives and begin first and foremost with the facts.”

Abortion in Ireland: committee votes for constitutional change

Tory health committee chair defends NHS chief in funding row with PM

The Conservative chair of the health select committee has defended the NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens, in his dispute with Theresa May over health service funding.

Dr Sarah Wollaston said she agreed with Stevens’ contradiction of May’s claim last Sunday that the NHS had been given more funding than it required up to 2020.

Stevens repeatedly dismissed May’s comments to Sky News when he appeared before the public accounts committee on Wednesday, showing the extent of the divisions between himself and the prime minister.

Asked on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme if the NHS had been allocated more cash than it needed, Wollaston replied: “I don’t think that is strictly true.”

She said the government’s £10bn figure included transfers from other healthcare budgets. “So, you can see how the government has reached that figure. But the committee felt that a fairer figure, if we’re using the usual measure, was £4.5bn, which is a very different number,” she said.

Health had to be considered with social care “and what Simon Stevens was very clear when he spoke to the committee about, was if you have cuts to social care, that has an enormous impact on the NHS. So that is why he doesn’t agree,” she said.

“And I would agree with him that the NHS hasn’t been given everything it asked for, because it doesn’t actually consider social care, and it doesn’t consider the cuts to public health budgets, the kind of prevention work that we know is essential if we’re going to reduce demand on the NHS.”

Responding to claims that Stevens was not doing enough to alleviate the NHS crisis, Wollaston said “Personally, I think that is unreasonable. I think as a public servant and somebody who heads the NHS, the government needs to give him their unequivocal support in the very hard job he is undertaking to try to get this whole system to work.”

Wollaston, a former GP, also criticised the scapegoating of family doctors and the threat to withdraw funding unless they agreed to work longer hours.

She said it was entirely wrong to blame one section of the workforce, when administrative work, home visits and chasing test results had to be done when surgeries were closed.

GPs were “extraordinarily stretched and working under relentless pressure as bed numbers [in hospitals] are being cut,” she said.

“We now have the lowest number of beds per head in Europe. What we are finding is more and more complex conditions are coming back to primary care, so the work of the GP is changing and the pressures on them are relentless.

“The workforce simply isn’t there in many parts of the country, So I think to then be suggesting that all of this problem is due to GPs not seeing people is really stretching it,” Wollaston said.

“It’s just not the case and wrong to scapegoat them, in my view.”

Tory health committee chair defends NHS chief in funding row with PM

Tory critics of Cameron lead battle to chair overall health decide on committee

Tory MP Sarah Wollaston has spoken out against components of the reorganisation of the NHS. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

Two fiercely independent female Tory MPs who have been strongly vital of David Cameron above factors of NHS policy will do battle this week to chair the potent Commons overall health choose committee in a close contest that is currently being watched nervously by ministers.

Outspoken former GP Sarah Wollaston and MP for Bristol North West, Charlotte Leslie, have both rallied strong cross-party assistance, pledging to champion patients’ interests, rather than be in the pocket of government or the healthcare profession.

The election of a fearless Tory MP prepared take on ministers where necessary and hold the NHS to account, is an uncomfortable prospect for Cameron in the runup to a common election in which Labour desires to make the well being support a central problem.

On the eve of hustings in the Commons on Monday, Leslie stepped up efforts to win backing from Labour and Lib Dem as effectively as Tory colleagues, by tearing into Cameron and the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, for refusing to fire former NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson, and for allowing him to retire early with a “excess fat pension” following the Mid-Staffs care scandal.

“I believe Cameron and Hunt had been definitely wrong not firing Nicholson or forcing him out,” she advised the Observer. “And I am horrified that he was permitted to retire early with such a large pension (£110,000 a year).”

Among 400 and 1,200 individuals died needlessly at Stafford hospital from 2005 and 2009 as a outcome of appalling care. Leslie also criticised a culture of cover-up in the NHS. “We have had sufficient words. If we want modify, we need to start off implementing some correct disincentives for managers to lie, with total force of the legal method.”

Three other Conservative MPs – former cabinet minister Caroline Spelman, former GP Phillip Lee and David Tredinnick, a keen supporter of alternative medicine, have joined the race to realize success former health secretary Stephen Dorrell, who recently announced he was stepping down as chairman.

Right after the 2010 basic election, the system for selecting select committee chairmen and women was taken out of the gift of get together whips and handed to backbench MPs, who jealously guard their new power, seeing the elections as a chance to express their authority above party hierachies.

Beneath a sharing deal agreed for this parliament, the health committee job is reserved for a Conservative but anybody regarded as a mere government loyalist is unlikely to progress in the race.

Wollaston, the MP for Totnes, is regarded by most MPs as the narrow favourite, possessing brought her expertise of the NHS into parliament and shown herself ready to speak out towards aspects of government NHS reforms she thinks had been unwell-conceived.

She has also criticised the way backbench MPs, especially women, have been locked out of decision making – even when they have personal knowledge of policy places, such as hers in the NHS – and has known as for an end to “posh, male and white” cliques about the leader.

Wollaston has described elements of the authentic NHS reorganisation pushed by former health secretary Andrew Lansley as “fully unrealistic” and “doomed to fail” in terms that infuriated Downing St.

Some senior Tories are attempting to paint Wollaston as “Labour’s candidate” – a move her supporters declare is a clear try to harm her campaign, and misrepresents her backing across the events.

Dr Lee is calling for the committee to be utilised as a cross-party forum in which to produce a consensus on how to accomplish reform of the NHS. He says the political cycle does not permit politicians to strategy for the lengthy term.

Tory critics of Cameron lead battle to chair overall health decide on committee

Who need to Stephen Dorrell as well being decide on committee chair?

Stephen Dorrell, Conservative MP for Charwood Photograph: Eleanor Bentall/ Eleanor Bentall/Corbis

Stephen Dorrell, chair of the well being choose committee, is standing down from the role, it was announced yesterday.

The resignation, which requires area with instant result, was announced on Twitter by committee member Sarah Wollaston.

In a subsequent letter to the speaker of the Property of Commons, Dorrell explained: “I have experimented with to chair the health committee in a way which emphasises the broad measure of agreement which I believe exists across celebration divisions on essential objectives of well being policy.”

Dorrell also stated that, even though he believes these key aims for policy are widely shared, “it is turning out to be clear that in the future we shall need to consider in a completely distinct way about how they are met”, and that he “can make a much more effective contribution to this developing considered process from a less overtly political position”.

Dorrell, a former well being secretary and Conservative MP for Charwood, has held the function considering that 2010, and there is now speculation about who will substitute him.

Who do you believe ought to be the following chair – and what do you make of Dorrell’s resignation? Share your views in the comments section below, or tweet us @GdnHealthcare.

Who need to Stephen Dorrell as well being decide on committee chair?

Comedian Seth Rogen"s touching Senate committee hearing on Alzheimer"s diseases

US actor Seth Rogen, 31, was appearing prior to the Senate Appropriation Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services to convey how he and his household has been impacted by Alzheimer’s ailment.

“I began dating my wife Lauren 9 many years in the past when her mother was nearly 54 many years old. It was during this journey, the first time I met my now mother-in-law, that Lauren 1st admitted to herself and then to me that one thing was off with her mom,” he said.

“After forgetting who she and her loved one were, she forgot how to communicate, feed herself, dress herself, all by age of 60.”

The actor went on to describe how he, his wife and some buddies set up a charity to increase funds for households impacted and analysis into the ailment, Hilarity for Charity.

Rogen completed: “I came right here these days for number of motives. 1 I’m a massive “House of Cards” fan. … Two, individuals need to have far more aid. I have personally witnessed the huge volume of fiscal strain this ailment triggers. …Three, to display men and women they are not alone, so number of men and women share their personal stories.”

Video courtesy C-Span

Comedian Seth Rogen"s touching Senate committee hearing on Alzheimer"s diseases