From RH Reality Check: http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/04/12/inquest-confirms-savita-halappanavars-life-was-subordinated-to-non-viable-fetus/
by Jodi Jacobson
April 12, 2013
Last year, RH Reality Check reported on the tragic and wholly preventable death of Savita Halappanavar at Galway University Hospital. Halappanavar, a dentist who was pregnant with her first child, was admitted to the hospital with severe back pain. She was in the midst of miscarrying a non-viable fetus in a much-wanted pregnancy.
Over the course of three days, Halappanavar experienced an incomplete miscarriage that resulted in a life-threatening infection and unbearable pain. Halappanavar and her husband begged doctors to terminate the pregnancy. The doctors refused because, as she was told by the hospital’s midwife manager, Anna Maria Burke, “Ireland is a Catholic country.”
And in that Catholic country, where a woman’s life is secondary to a non-viable fetus, the woman died.
Now, a report by the Health Service Executive has concluded, according to the Irish Times, that there was “an overemphasis by hospital staff on the welfare of Ms Halappanavar’s unviable foetus and an underemphasis on her deteriorating health.”
As reported by the Times, the report says, “The investigating team considers there was an apparent overemphasis on the need not to intervene until the foetal heart stopped, together with an underemphasis on the need to focus an appropriate attention on monitoring for and managing the risk of infection and sepsis in the mother.”
Continue reading at: http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/04/12/inquest-confirms-savita-halappanavars-life-was-subordinated-to-non-viable-fetus/
