Post Punk Kitchen Forum

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/no ... on-refusal

I'm sick of old [white] religious dudes making laws that will never affect them personally. Ugh.

Amen to that. I'm not a big fan of abortion, but sometimes, it's warranted. I agree with Bill Clinton - it should be legal and rare. But we also need a more compassionate society that is more supportive of women and children, and is not so focused on money above all things. I faced that choice three times, and chose to have my children (twice by "accident") and it was not an easy choice. I look at it also this way - what if it was my daughter who had been assaulted or abused? Would I refuse her an abortion? It's a really complex issue, and I agree - old men (of ANY race) are NOT the ones who should be deciding it.

Its particularly telling that Savita was a woman of color. If you click through to the Irish Times article, there is a picture of her and she is South Asian.

I'm very sorry to hear about this. Ireland (where I am from) has a very complicated and twisted attitude to abortion which is embedded in the Catholic attitudes that formed our Republic. We only made divorce legal in the late 1990s and over-the-counter condoms in the early 90s. @ Tofulish, it has very little to do with the lady being South East Asian, it has more to do with the politics of abortion in Ireland.

Its always odd how these kinds of things keep happening to poor women or women of color but race and class never has anything to do with it. Racism and classism are insidious. On the face it seems like the rule is neutral on its face, but the application can be very racist or classist. I am pretty sure that if a pretty young white woman was in agony because of an incomplete miscarriage, the MDs and staff would have found a way to terminate a 17 week old fetus with no ability to survive outside the womb. The lives of POC and poor people is cheap.

To be honest, it is unlikely to be a race issue. It is just as likely to happen to a white woman in ROI. It's probably more to do with the location of the hospital than anything. Unfortunately it can also be down to a case of bad medicine, she wouldn't be the first woman not to be taken seriously when gravely ill.

The lives of women are cheap too. There may have been a race issue at play but I get the feeling that it's more rooted in Savita being female.

To quote Irish Medical Council guidelines; "abortion is illegal in Ireland except where there is a real and substantial risk to the life (as distinct from the health) of the mother". I'm not at all trying to deny the huge discrepancies that exist in health care provision between ethnic groups, clearly their abortion policy is pretty archaic and I have little doubt Savita's ethnicity only compounded the issue.

It's heartbreaking the amount of lives that have been lost to religious conflict in Ireland - and now in a paltry attempt to try and save one?! Madness.

Good grief. Whatever factors played into causing this incident, it is unspeakably horrific.

Its always great when a bunch of white people tell you that race isn't a factor. Sorry, I don't buy it. If it isn't a factor, where are all the stories about stuff like this happening to white women. I have South Asian friends who live in ROI and in their experience Ireland is pretty racist.

It's also possible that it's getting coverage because they were wealthy (her husband is apparently an engineer). It could have happened to plenty of young lower-income white women and we just never heard about it. We don't know, especially those of us who don't live in Ireland. I don't think it's helpful start making assumptions when the primary issue at hand is that women (regardless of race and class) and having their lives jeopardized by current policy.

Maybe I'm confused, but according to the article it seems she didn't need an abortion at all. She was miscarrying and needed usual medical management of a miscarriage, and somehow didn't receive it.

Ouch, that's a kinda cheap shot! Should the Irish here say it's great when non-Irish insist their opinion on the country is more accurate than theirs? It's pretty harsh to tell anyone they're wrong just because of the colour of their skin.

We're talking about a country who's government actively tried to block a 14yr old rape victim from travelling to the mainland to get an abortion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_v._X

It appears to happen to all sorts of women. There was a case of 'Miss D', a 17 year old whose baby had a large portion of the brain and skull missing. She wanted a termination but the passport office were asked to not issue her with a passport and the police were asked to arrest her if she attempted to leave the country:

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/3363/


This article from the Guardian has similar accounts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/06/irish-pain-abortion-law-case-studies?intcmp=239

Ok, can we bring this back to topic please.

Whether or not race was a factor, this is a very very bad situation.

Mat.

Removing dead products of conception is not terminating a pregnancy. Let's try to be clear in our use of terminology even if the media is not.

Do they really not provide any surgical management of miscarriage/spontaneous abortion/fetal demise in Ireland, due to the elective termination controversy?

From what I read about it:
They thought she was miscarrying and since she was in so much pain and her health was deteriorating quickly, she asked medication/procedure to induce labor to expediate the miscarriage. Since the fetus still was registering a heartbeat, they wouldn't. Once the fetus had no heartbeat, they removed it, but her health continued to decline. They say there is no proof that the abortion would have saved her life, but obviously not having one didn't help at all.

Beanitarian, I think the problem was that they waited until it was dead to remove it. It had a heart beat initially (even after it was clear that she was miscarrying) which is why they refused to do the procedure.

ETA: what the above poster said

I see. Are the laws really so restrictive that medical management of a miscarriage (meaning that the fetus will inevitably be lost) is disallowed in the case that the fetus has a beating heart? This seems ridiculous to me, as what she needed was definitely not a termination of the pregnancy, as you cannot terminate a pregnancy that is already being spontaneously aborted. I guess I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case, but I wonder if there was misinterpretation of the law or the diagnosis by the hospital staff.

I think that her ethnicity has helped make this international headlines. She was a prominent dentist, and was very active in the local expat scene, so she has this group now advocating for her. These cases have been around Irish news for a long time; women's health care issues are held hostage by strict Catholicism that many Irish citizens don't even subscribe to any longer.

I'm not saying that racism isn't a factor here. Obviously I don't know that, but women of all classes being treated like this in Irish hospitals is not always breaking news. There is a reason that most women who can afford it go outside of the national health care system for their needs. Well men too, honestly. Not to say the Irish system is all bad (my cousin with autism gets good care), but there is a lot broken too.

Well, yeah. Just in case you had any doubt after reading that her name is Savita Halappanavar.

Only from what I've read today so take with a grain of salt, but: They said hospitals often err on the side of doing nothing for fear of breaking the law, because they might have to prove that the mother's life was in danger without the abortion. If after the fact the mother's life wasn't in as dire circumstance as they originally thought, they could get in serious trouble.

There is some wiggle room, but the laws are on the side of an overly zealous dr who is more worried about an unviable fetus than a woman's life.

Fezza, wasn't ROI's abortion law crafted in the late 19th century? Are the laws in NI different?

Yes, it's the offences against the person act 1861 which outlaws abortion in both Ireland and NI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offences_a ... n_Act_1861

A Marie Stopes clinic was opened recently in Belfast, but only offers medical abortions (up to 9 weeks, I think), so anyone living on the island of Ireland needs to travel (probably to the UK) to obtain a termination after 9 weeks.

I'm sickened and angered by this whole situation. I was at the protest outside the Dail yesterday, and I will go on the march to be held on Saturday.