A woman has died in Ireland because she was refused an abortion for a baby she was already miscarrying.
She went into a hospital on Sunday with terrible back pain. She was 17 weeks pregnant and the doctors told her she was miscarrying her baby. There was no way to stop the miscarriage, they said, and insisted the family would just need to wait a few hours.
Two days later, she was in such terrible agony, the father asked for an abortion to expedite the miscarriage. “‘Sorry, can’t help you. It’s a Catholic country. Can’t help you. It’s a Catholic team.’ So, Savita said that she was not a Catholic. She is Hindu, so why impose the law of the land on her?” her husband said. “They knew they couldn’t help the baby. Why did they not look at the bigger life?”
According to Kitty Holland of the Irish Times, Doctors at Galway University Hospital said that as long as the fetal heartbeat could be felt, the law prevented them from ending the pregnancy. In Ireland, abortion is legal if the mother’s life is at risk, which is different from her health being at risk.
On Wednesday, Savita Halappanavar died of the blood infection septicemia. She was 31 years old.
The hospital, while expressing sympathy, are saying the facts are yet to be established.
Cases like these are why I am terrified of abortion laws becoming more restrictive. It should be a medical decision between a woman and her doctor. This baby was already dead; its heart was just still beating. There was no way to save the baby, but the laws were written so unclearly they left a woman in agonizing pain for 3 days and ultimately let her die.
That’s torture. That’s inhumane. That’s making the birth mother less important than a baby who has already been fated to not be born. In my humble opinion, it’s also medical manslaughter.
Here’s the CNN Article.