In Ireland, her name was Savita Halappanavar. She was a dentist. Her water broke at 17 weeks, like Amanda Zurawski’s. Doctors in Ireland told her that they could not end her pregnancy because the fetus was protected under Ireland’s Eighth Amendment as long as it still had a heartbeat. She begged for an abortion. Like Zurawski, she developed sepsis. Then she died. She was 31. Her death ignited a political revolution that liberalized Ireland’s abortion laws. Thousands of people rallied in the streets holding banners with Savita’s portrait that read “Never again.” Six years later, Irish voters repealed the Eighth Amendment in a referendum. Under the right circumstances, one death is enough.
I wonder if our dead woman is reading Good Night, Moon to her toddler after a long day at work. I wonder if she is logging into online night classes with her feet in a pair of fuzzy slippers. I wonder if she will rage and weep against the injustice of it all, when she learns that the doctors in her state will not help her unless she becomes almost dead. She may not be a woman at all, but a trans man or a nonbinary person who has already faced medical professionals inclined to discriminate against their very being. In a country where Black women seek abortions at higher rates and die far more commonly from maternal health complications, our dead woman is likely to be Black, and therefore, she is
— source thenation.com | Amy Littlefield | Mar 14, 2023