I’m giving birth as a battle rages over maternity care in Ireland. We shouldn’t have to pay to feel safe | Caelainn Hogan
An unfair two-tier system is, at last, giving way to universal state care. But private interests and highly paid doctors are resistingThere were no chandeliers in the public ward where...
By Caelainn Hogan · The Guardian Opinion
An unfair two-tier system is, at last, giving way to universal state care. But private interests and highly paid doctors are resisting There were no chandeliers in the public ward where I spent my first days as a mother, at the oldest continuously operating maternity hospital in the world. The room echoed with cries, the well-worn floor bouncing under footsteps, the windows looking out on Dublin’s city centre. Now the Rotunda hospital, where I’m due to give birth again soon, is counting down to its 1 millionth baby. It is also at the centre of a bitter debate over plans to reform Ireland’s two-tier state healthcare system, so that those who pay to “go private” in public hospitals no longer gain an unfair advantage over those who don’t. Caelainn Hogan is a journalist and the author of Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘Fallen Women’ and Their Children Continue reading...