pa2538c.jpg Paul Lachine

A Death in Galway

The case of Savita Halappanavar, who died after Irish doctors refused to terminate her life-threatening pregnancy, reverses Western stereotypes regarding Eastern societies. Halappanavar’s death resulted from the atavism of a Western theocracy, while protesters in her native India have upheld the Enlightenment's rationalist ethos.

NEW YORK – The case of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist from India who had moved, with her husband, to Ireland, continues to reverberate around the world. Halappanavar, an expectant mother, died after her doctors, citing Ireland’s legal prohibition of abortion, refused to remove her 17-week-old fetus, despite allegedly acknowledging that the fetus was not viable and placing Halappanavar in an intensive-care unit as her condition deteriorated.

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