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What’s the truth about Savita Halappanavar?

A new website fact-checks the pro-choice claim that Savita Halappanavar died because she was refused an abortion.

Abortion activists in Ireland have exploited the recent loss of Savita Halappanavar to support their assertion abortion is sometimes necessary to save a mother’s life. Yet no medical evidence indicates that abortion would have saved Savita’s life.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that Savita may never have requested an abortion at all. The Irish Times journalist who broke the story now says that it may be found that Savita made “no request for a termination.” The reporter, Kitty Holland, is the daughter of two abortion activists: Mary Holland and Eamonn McCann. Previously, the Irish Health Service Executive investigation reported that no request for an abortion was documented in Savita’s medical records. If true, it may be that her tragic death was intentionally lied about, hijacked by sensationalist journalism, and used as a vehicle to push a pro-abortion agenda upon the people of Ireland.

One video featured on the website exposes myths surrounding Savita’s death:

Dr. Hema Divakar, the president-elect of the Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India, told The Hindu that ”in that situation of septicaemia, if the doctors had meddled with the live baby, Savita would have died two days earlier. Even if the law permitted it, it is not as if her life would have been saved because of termination.”

Indian government officials lambasting Ireland to legalize abortion ignore that India – which permits abortion – suffers from a maternal mortality rate 33 times higher than Ireland’s! Other countries permitting abortion, like the United States and United Kingdom, also have higher rates of maternal mortality. The Centers for Disease Control report that 12 women died from legal abortion procedures in the United States since 2008.

Misinformation propagated by pro-choice media has even gone so far as to call Irish doctors “murderers.” Prof. Fionnuala McAuliffe, spokesperson for the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, says that Irish doctors do intervene to save the life of a pregnant woman, even if it risks the life of the baby, and that there is “no evidence they [doctors] are letting people die.”

Media reports based on the autopsy investigation suggest that an antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection may have played a role in Savita’s death. Dr. James Clair, microbiologist at Cork’s Mercy University Hospital, thinks ”that the problem was an unforeseen ESBL [Extended Spectrum Beta-Lactamase] infection rather than an issue of obstetric mishandling.”

Abortion is frequently dangerous to the mother and always lethal to her child. It’s time for Ireland to tell the pro-choice lobby: “We’re safer without abortion!”

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  • Shem

    Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of gray area in a case like this. But certain things are facts here.

    Even before being admitted to the hospital, Savita was told that, even though she was in great pain, no intervention could take place while there was still a fetal heartbeat. It’s clear enough that this adult woman was not the doctors’ first priority. And no antibiotics were administered until the 23rd, two entire days after she was admitted to the hospital, because of concerns about its effect on the fetus.

    The focus on the unborn, and the lack of concern for a sick woman, is something that comes through loud and clear in pro-lifers’ pronouncements about the Savita case. Like it or not, the pro-life community is going to have to live with its rhetoric.

    • http://twitter.com/Astraspider Astraspider

      Ireland has long been one of the “crown jewels” for pro-life policy, so there’s a knee-jerk defensiveness they feel about the abortion prohibition there and anything that might threaten it.

      • Shem

        I can’t imagine that any inquiry in Ireland will come up with a conclusion other than that Savita Halappanavar contracted a heinous bacterium at home and the hospital wasn’t to blame. It’s still open to question whether an abortion would have prevented the septicemia, though Josh Craddock’s amateur certainty that it would not have seems a bit premature.

        Much as the pro-lifers try to spin it, though, this has already become an international cause célebre. Now people can put a human face on the damage done by putting a fetus’s needs above that of an adult woman.

        • lovethink

          I’m going to assume you abortion supporters here raised the same uproar over Tonya Reaves death due to a botched Planned Parenthood abortion. If not, you would be showing typical abortion industry hypocrisy. Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry don’t care about women, just the money they make off us. http://www.operationrescue.org/archives/autopsy-reveals-planned-parenthoods-negligence-resonsible-for-reaves-death/

        • CARMEL350

          Tanya Reeves a 24 year old woman from Chicago died in july 2012 from complications of a botched abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Feb 7th 2013, another woman dies after a late term abortion at a licensed abortion clinic run by LeRoy Carhart. Please explain how putting these women first killed them?

      • lovethink

        I’m curious, did you confront Planned Parenthood over the botched abortion they gave Tonya Reaves that ended her life? http://www.operationrescue.org/archives/autopsy-reveals-planned-parenthoods-negligence-resonsible-for-reaves-death/

        • lovethink

          …and the life of Tonya’s unborn child. See, we prolifers get so focused on the women, we sometimes forget about the unborn baby too.

    • Julia

      If that was the case that she was denied treatment to save her life, that was against Ireland’s laws, so there is no need for the laws to changed.
      Ireland’s laws require that the mother be given any treatment that is necessary to save her life, even if, as a side effect, the child may die (unless the mother doesn’t want the treatment).

    • CARMEL350

      Please tell me where you got your information?

  • Aura Lea

    The facts on this case still seem confused. Did she get an infection because of the miscarriage, or the other way around, for instance?

    In any case, if removing the baby were indeed medically indicated, with the death of the baby as an inevitable consequence, that is still a world apart from direct abortion, the intentional targeting of the child, which pro-abortion groups are using this tragedy to promote. We ought to be able to save the lives of pregnant women without unleashing mass killings-on-demand of unborn children in yet another country.

    forthelifeofthenation.blogspot.com

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