The truth is continuing to emerge as Kitty Holland backtracks on her story published in the Irish Times.
BY HILARY WHITE
Mon Dec 03, 2012 13:26 EST
DUBLIN, December 3, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kitty Holland, the Irish Times reporter who broke the story about the death of Savita Halappanavar that launched a global crusade against Ireland’s pro-life laws, has admitted that the story of Mrs. Halappanavar asking for an abortion may have been a little bit “muddled” in the retelling.
In an interview this weekend on Newstalk 106, Holland appeared flustered and defensive, deflecting blame for the uproar onto Mrs. Halappanavar’s husband, Praveen. She told radio interviewer Marc Coleman on Newstalk 106, that the story may have been garbled and there may have been “no request for a termination” after all.
Coleman asked, “You’re satisfied that he did request a termination?” Holland responded, “Oh, I’m not satisfied of anything.”
“I’m satisfied of what he told me,” she said, “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.”
Covering, Holland added, “One may even wonder are requests for terminations recorded at all in Irish maternity hospitals.”
Asked about discrepancies in the reports on the timeline of Mrs. Halappanavar’s care – particularly when, exactly, she started receiving antibiotics after her admittance to hospital – Holland replied, “All one can surmise is that his recollection of events is…the actual timeline… may be a little muddled.” She said that “at one point” Mr. Halappanavar told her that she was only given painkillers, and never received any antibiotics.
Holland later told the state broadcaster RTE that her coverage in the Irish Times “never suggested” that an abortion might have saved Mrs. Halappanavar’s life.
Within hours of the publication online of the Times report, the worldwide media responded with a frenzy of coverage, running sensationalistic headlines like that of the India Times tabloid that said, “Ireland murders pregnant Indian dentist”. Since then, abortion campaigners around the globe have concentrated their forces on demanding that the Irish Republic, one of a tiny handful of western nations that still protects unborn children in the womb, institute legalized abortion on demand. The story as it is being retold everywhere is that Mrs. Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist from India living in Galway, went to hospital while miscarrying her 17-week-old daughter and, fearing for her life, asked for and was refused a “termination” and died later of a massive infection.
Savita’s husband, Praveen Halappanavar, went to the press and said that she would not have died had she been able to have the abortion. The hospital and the government have launched investigations, but Mrs. Halappanavar’s husband and family have refused to allow Savita’s medical records to be made public. He has now announced that he intends to sue the Irish government in the European Court of Human Rights after Irish Health Minister refused his demand for a public inquiry.
Mr. Halappanavar accused the hospital’s “Catholic ethos” and Ireland’s pro-life laws for causing his wife’s death, demanding that they be abandoned. That demand has been taken up by Savita’s relatives in India and the Indian ambassador to Ireland, as well as abortion activists worldwide. Demonstrations in India demanding a change to Irish law have even been organized by the leading Indian opposition political party. The Irish government has responded that no decisions can be made until they have seen the results of an internal inquiry by the Health Services Executive, though some members of the Labour party have echoed the calls for legalization.
Holland responded to questions about discrepancies in her Times report compared to her later reporting in the Observer. After her initial article in the Irish Times on November 14th, Holland three days later wrote in the Observer the disclaimer, “The fact that Savita had been refused a termination was a factor in her death has yet to be established”.
Coleman asked her why that sentence was included in the Observer but not in her original article for the Times. Holland responded, stammering, “Well, I suppose throughout the original article …umm… I mean it was quoting the concerns of the husband, Praveen. And, at no point … I mean … there was … you know it was hinted at in the headline, which obviously I didn’t write. You know, ‘refused a termination’ was in quotes. Umm, but you know I was reporting the concerns of the husband, and what he said he was concerned about and what he said happened in the hospital.
“Whereas my piece in the Observer was a more kind of background piece from my point of view, so it was obviously important for me to say quite explicitly that, you know, it has not been established that a lack of access to a termination…”
Coleman told Holland that there are a lot of concerns about the “contrast” between the November 14th report and her later reporting: “It did travel around the world very quickly, the assumption that this woman had died precisely because of a lack of termination.”
“Well, I mean, what I wrote were the concerns of the husband, and I suppose what readers took … decided to infer from that is … what the concerns were of the husband and what he stated happened from his recollection of events in the hospital.”
“The fact that a healthy… as far as we know… healthy 31 year-old woman who was 17 weeks pregnant entered a hospital in 21st century Ireland and was dead a week later is a tragic story anyway, and would have been a big story anyway. A maternal death is very rare.”
She continued to reiterate that she was reporting “the husband’s recollection or take on the events, and the concerns that he was wanting to talk about that took it off around the world.”
Developing…
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