Inquests are essential to understanding maternal deaths

Given the legal neutrality of a coroner’s inquest in determining how a woman died, staff too would benefit from what we can learn through the inquest process

Jo Murphy Lawless

Between 2008 and 2014, eight public inquests into the deaths of women who died in Irish maternity units ended with verdicts of medical misadventure.

Every maternal death - like those of Tania McCabe, Evelyn Flanagan, Jennifer Crean, Bimbo Onanuga, Dhara Kivlehan, Nora Hyland, Savita Halappanavar and Sally Rowlette - is a dreadful tragedy with life-long consequences for the families involved.