Ireland abortion policy under scrutiny after woman's
death
The death of
31 year old dentist in Ireland has caused nothing less than an uproar in the
past weeks. Savita Halappanavar died from blood poisoning (septicaemia) a week after being found to be
miscarrying while at a Galway hospital. Her sudden death intensifies pressure
on government to create guidelines on abortion. Ireland’s near-total ban on
abortion has come under renewed scrutiny amid an outcry over her death because
she was denied a termination. A week earlier she went to the hospital, but was
denied the termination because Ireland is a “Catholic country”. At present, abortions
are permitted only if there is a “real and substantive” threat to a woman’s
life. Ruth Bowie from the group Terminations For Medical Reasons Ireland
stated, “"It is devastating to think that if Savita had been in another
country she would probably be alive today," she said. "Does it take a
death of a young innocent woman to finally make our government stand up and do
something once and for all? The expert group report is long overdue, how long
more do we have to wait? How many more tragedies are going to take place before
action is taken?" After asking the
staff several times to terminate her pregnancy because she was miscarrying, her
family claimed medical staff denied her because they detected a foetal
heartbeat. They believe this delay in allowing her to abort is what caused the
blood poisoning resulting in her death. Even though Savita was neither Irish
nor Catholic, a hospital consultant said it was the law and again it was a
Catholic country. Her and her husband were on top of the world when they found
out she was pregnant. Ivana Bacik, a Labour member of Ireland's second
parliamentary chamber, the Seanad, said the time was now right to clarify the
law surrounding abortion in Ireland.
Also Clare Daly, MP of the United Left Alliance said, "A woman has
died because Galway University hospital refused to perform an abortion needed
to prevent serious risk to her life. This is a situation we were told would
never arise. An unviable foetus – the woman was having a miscarriage – was
given priority over the woman's life," said Daly. Figures released in May
by the Department of Health (DoH) showed the numbers of women from the Republic
of Ireland travelling to England and Wales for abortions fell by 7% last year,
but ASN says the number of women contacting it is set to double for the third
year in a row. Read article here
The death of
this non Catholic and non-Irish woman is sad to think that if she were allowed
an abortion she would still be alive today. I agree that new laws need to be
put in place to prevent any more tragedies like this in occurring. I also
believe that women should be in charge of making decision about their own bodies
not the government. It wasn’t like her and her husband wanted to abort the
baby, but in the case of her life she chose to do so because they could have
tried again and had a successful pregnancy. If the government of Ireland does
not come up with something soon on this law, they will have a lot of lawsuits
on their hands. Yet this is indeed a problem seen all over the world of
countries trying to control a women’s body and their decisions to terminate or
not.
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