Editor’s note. This appeared today at LifeZine, an Irish pro-life site.
Kitty Holland, the Irish Times journalist who sparked an international media firestorm when she broke the story of the death of Savita Halappanavar last month has admitted that the facts of the case are still completely unclear. She also conceded that the central claim of her article, that the Halappanavars made repeated requests for an abortion, may ultimately prove to be unfounded. Holland had earlier acknowledged that the relevance of abortion to the case “has yet to be established”.
Interviewed on Newstalk radio’s Coleman at Large last Wednesday, Kitty Holland admitted to Marc Coleman that there were problems with Praveen Halappanavar’s account of things, and that there were differences between what he had said when she originally interviewed him over the phone in India and when she interviewed him later in Galway.
“All one can surmise is that his recollection of events—the actual timeline and days—may be a little muddled… we only have Praveen and his solicitor’s take on what was in or not in the notes—we’re relying all the time on their take on what happened… Oh, I’m not satisfied of anything. I’m satisfied of what he told me, but I await as much as anyone else the inquiry and the findings. I can’t tell for certain—who knows what will come out in that inquiry? They may come back and say she came in with a disease she caught from something outside the hospital before she even arrived in, and there was no request for termination…”
Irish Catholic columnist Greg Daly points out on his blog that Praveen has contradicted himself and changed his story several times, and the sequence of events as he describes them does not tally with that which purports to come from the hospital.
“That there are discrepancies in Praveen’s account shouldn’t surprise us, of course, given that the man spent a week watching his wife suffer and die—distress, exhaustion, and trauma can lead to serious confusion, as horrible events all blur together.”
Writing in The Observer on November 18, Holland described the background to the writing of the story. “Whether the fact that Savita had been refused a termination was a factor in her death has yet to be established,” she admitted.
As the factual basis for the sensational treatment of this tragic story by The Irish Times becomes ever more apparent, the case grows for an independent public inquiry into the media handling of the case. Ireland’s standards of medical care have been denigrated around the world and significant reputational damage has been inflicted on the country. If it is shown that this was done simply to advance a pro-abortion agenda, those responsible should be held accountable.
This ran at www.prolife.ie/prolife/savita-journalist-admits-story-muddled-maybe-no-abortion-request