From India, Pressure on Ireland Over Abortion Laws By
NIHARIKA MANDHANA 
Cathal Mcnaughton/Reuters A candlelit vigil outside University Hospital Galway in Ireland on Nov. 15, held in memory of Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar, who died at the hospital.
The death of an Indian woman in Ireland who was reportedly refused a potentially lifesaving abortion has rekindled the debate on abortion laws in the predominantly Catholic nation and has sparked outrage in India.
“We are shocked that such a death was allowed to take place in this day and age,” said Sudha Sundararaman, the general secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, by telephone. “
We lost a life that could have been saved by medical intervention because of a religion-based law that goes completely against international laws.”
Reuters Savita Halappanavar in an undated family photo in Galway, Ireland.
Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist who lived near Galway, Ireland, was 17 weeks pregnant when she was informed, on complaining of severe back pain, that she was having a miscarriage. Despite repeated requests for an abortion, she was told that Ireland is a Catholic country, said her husband, Praveen Halappanavar, and that it would be illegal to terminate a pregnancy while the fetus’s heart was still beating. A few days later, Dr. Halappanavar died of septicemia on Oct. 28 at the University Hospital Galway.
Protesters took to the streets of Ireland and New Delhi, raising banners and chanting slogans, in response to Dr. Halappanavar’s death, which many blamed on Ireland’s abortion laws, among the most restrictive in the world.
“I don’t think as a country we should allow a situation where women’s rights are put at risk in this way,” Eamon Gilmore, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, told Parliament on Thursday. “There is no question of equivocation. We need to bring legal clarity to this issue, and that is what we are going to do.”
Two inquiries have been set up to determine the cause of Dr. Halappanavar’s death.
On Friday, the Indian government too stepped in, promising to take up the matter with the Irish. “It is a sad issue,” said the foreign minister, Salman Khurshid, in a televised interview. “They have a legal framework that is rooted in religion. But there can’t be a bigger goal in religion than to save the life of a mother.”
The Irish ambassador to India, Feilim McLaughlin, met with M. Ganapathi, a secretary in the ministry of external affairs this afternoon. ‘He conveyed that there is a sense of angst in India caused by the fact that a life was cut short in its prime,’ said Syed Akbaruddin, the official spokesman for the external affairs ministry. The government of India also expressed hope that the probe would be thorough and independent, and that the Indian government would be kept informed about the progress and the outcome of the inquiry, Mr. Akbaruddin said. It was also conveyed, he said, that “we hope no other Indian meets the same fate.”
The Indian ambassador to Ireland also met with the Irish foreign minister on Friday. India will request that the Irish authorities share the results of the investigations. “We are taking one step at a time,” said Mr. Akbaruddin. “We want to first understand what the circumstances of the death were.”
But activists in India say there needs to be more action. “Minority and immigrant communities should lead a movement to protect their interests in the countries of their residence,” said Kirti Singh, an advocate in Delhi who works on issues of women’s rights.
The Indian government should also register a protest with the Irish authorities, she said, since an Indian did not receive adequate care from their medical system. “What happened was in violation of international law and our national laws,” she said.
The international position, she explained, is that a woman must have the right to an abortion if there is danger to her life. India’s abortion law, which was passed in 1972 and is broader in scope, allows abortions in several circumstances, including when the life of the mother is at risk, where rape is involved and even when contraception fails.
Ms. Singh advocates expanding abortion rights even further, arguing that women shouldn’t have to justify their decision to end their pregnancies. “When we are fighting for broader rights in India, how can we allow something like this to happen?” she said.
Ireland’s laws place a near ban on abortion, a fraught and emotive social issue in that country. In 1992, in what is known as the “X-case” involving a 14-year-old rape victim, the Supreme Court ruled that abortions would be allowed when there was a “real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of the mother.” Since then, successive governments, reluctant to stir the pot on an issue that could alienate conservative voters, have dragged their feet on legislation that would lay down precisely the circumstances in which an abortion would be legal. As a result, thousands of women seeking to terminate their pregnancies travel to nearby England and Wales, which have less stringent abortion laws.
Whether or not Dr. Halappanavar’s case induces a change in Ireland’s legal system, many in India say that Dr. Halappanavar’s family and the Indian government must demand justice. “If the investigation shows that the death was a consequence of the law, then we need to fight at the international level,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar, an Indian parliamentarian. “Someone has lost their life. There must be accountability.”
This idea is not without precedent. In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights heard the case of a woman from Lithuania who was in remission from cancer and believed that there was a risk that her pregnancy would cause a relapse. She was also concerned about a risk to the fetus if she carried it to term.
Unable to get an abortion in Ireland, she decided to have one in England. She argued that by denying her an abortion, Ireland had violated her human rights by putting her life at risk. The court ordered Ireland to pay 15,000 euros ($19,000) in damages to the woman.
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Sikhs were killed in the main railway station (Photo: Ashok Vahie)
