When do women in Ireland get to say “no”?
Presented without many words of my own, because, speechless.
Ireland, where force feeding a woman pregnant with her rapist child, then forcing a c-section in early 3rd trimester is legal. Wow.
— Jennifer Gunter (@DrJenGunter) August 17, 2014
When do women in Ireland get to say “no”? Today we find out that the answer is “never”, not really - not if a man has other ideas and the state decides to enforce his use of a woman’s body.
newstatesman.com
If you read this in a horror novel, you could reasonably criticise the plot for being too far-fetched. #repealthe8th pic.twitter.com/sX7jZV5zjs
— Hilary Lennon (@hilarylennon) August 17, 2014
‘the woman&the unborn baby were represented by separate legal teams’. Choice denied even after ‘traumatic rape’ -Ireland 2014 #repealthe8th
— Oona Frawley (@OonaFrawley) August 17, 2014
Other related cases:
Twenty years on: a timeline of the X case
And more recently:
It doesn’t matter if you’re not part of the religion that’s making the law.
Confusing Law, Deadly Result
A report into the death of Savita Halappanavar by Ireland’s Health Service Executive, has charted a series of failures compounded by the fear that doctors could fall foul of criminal law if they saved the mother by aborting a miscarrying fetus:
Savita Halappanavar’s husband, Praveen, said doctors determined that she was miscarrying within hours of her hospitalization for severe pain on Sunday, Oct. 21. He said that over the next three days doctors refused their requests for a termination of her fetus to combat her own surging pain and fading health.
“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby,” he told The Irish Times in a telephone interview from Belgaum, southwest India. “When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning, Savita asked: `If they could not save the baby, could they induce to end the pregnancy?’ The consultant said: `As long as there is a fetal heartbeat, we can’t do anything.”’
“Again on Tuesday morning … the consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita said: “I am neither Irish nor Catholic,” but they said there was nothing they could do,” Praveen Halappanavar was quoted as saying.
