Salon.com > Savita Halappanavar

Ireland introduces proposal to clarify the legality of emergency abortions

Wed, 01 May 2013 20:09:00 +0000

The tragic, preventable death of Savita Halappanavar in October 2012 stirred international outrage over Ireland's restrictive abortion law, and spurred the country to revisit its ban on the procedure in all cases except when a woman's life is in danger. On Wednesday, the Irish government released a proposal that would maintain the current ban on the procedure, but "clarify" when it is legally permissible to perform an emergency, lifesaving abortion.

According to the bill, abortions would be legally allowable when:

Two medical practitioners, have, in accordance with this head, jointly certified in good faith that there is a real and substantial risk of loss of the pregnant woman’s life other than by way of self-destruction and in their reasonable opinion this risk can be averted only by that medical procedure.

The measure also makes clear that an abortion may be performed in situations in which there is an "immediate risk of loss of the pregnant woman's life" and the procedure is deemed "immediately necessary."

Critically ill woman faces jail time if she goes forward with lifesaving abortion

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:32:00 +0000

According to a report from Amnesty International, a seriously ill and pregnant El Salvadorian woman may face jail time if she goes forward with a lifesaving and medically recommended abortion. Abortion is illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador.

The 22-year-old mother of one, identified only as Beatriz, is four-and-a-half months pregnant, but her doctors have confirmed that the fetus has anencephaly (developing without a brain and certain parts of the skull) and that the pregnancy is nonviable. In addition to the fetal diagnosis, Beatriz is experiencing critical health complications related to her lupus and kidney disease.

The hospital treating Beatriz requested legal permission to perform the abortion more than a month ago, but authorities have still not agreed to let them proceed. Now, if government policy and religious ideology interfering with a woman's right to access abortion care or a doctor's ability to exercise medical judgment and save a woman's life sounds familiar, it should.

Clergy are not doctors — and the U.S. has its own Savita Halappanavars

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:45:00 +0000

The death of Savita Halappanavar -- the woman who died of sepsis in Ireland after being denied her request for termination of a nonviable pregnancy -- drew outrage and attention in the United States late last fall, but one crucial point was often missed. Even in America, where abortion is mostly legal, cases like Halappanavar's are a known reality in Catholic hospitals.

Take one case detailed to medical sociologist Lori Freedman by the doctor involved. A woman 16 weeks pregnant with twins was diagnosed with a molar pregnancy, which can lead to cancer, and "didn't want to carry the pregnancy further." She went to the hospital with vaginal bleeding, but unluckily for her, it was a Catholic one. There, the ethics committee decided that a uterine evacuation was tantamount to abortion, because there was a slim chance one of the fetuses would survive.

According to another doctor who witnessed the situation, "The clergy who made the decision Googled molar pregnancy."

The Catholic Church’s angry Christmas

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:16:00 +0000

For the holidays this year, the Catholic Church chose to give the world the gift of bizarre, alienating and utterly missing the point rhetoric. Oh, you shouldn't have! We already got one of those from the NRA!

First, Pope Benedict XVI used his annual holiday message to the Vatican to denounce gay and lesbian progress as a "manipulation of nature" and an "attack" on the family. Now, Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of all Ireland, has used the galvanizing death of a pregnant woman in a Galway hospital as an excuse to double down on anti-abortion rhetoric. Guys, maybe next year you could ask Santa for a sense of timing and a pair of ears that aren't tone-deaf.