Koppiyam : Ireland Savita Abortion – Unmayum Pinnaniyum Raj TV Tamil

The young Indian dentist’s tragic miscarriage may provide ammunition for those seeking action on a political taboo When I got a call late on Wednesday night, 7 November, from a contact telling me about a woman who had died in hospital in the west of Ireland — having been miscarrying an unviable foetus and having asked repeatedly for a termination — I suspected it could be a big story. If it were true, the political and constitutional implications for Ireland were enormous. What I was not prepared for was how the death of this young Indian Hindu woman would cause consternation across the world.
Abortion is absolutely the most emotive, divisive issue in Irish society, cleaving not only political parties, but workplaces, groups of friends and even families. Successive governments have avoided confronting it, avoided its reality in Irish society — more than 3,000 women a year leave Ireland to have an abortion, usually in England — and avoided acknowledging it through the provision of legislative leadership. The death of a woman in such circumstances was probably inevitable given the lack of clarity about when an abortion is or is not legal here. Savita Halappanavar’s death has been explosive.
That a woman had died in this fashion was all my contact knew. No name, no dates, but a number for someone who knew a little more. I called that person, who knew only that her name was Savita or Sabita “or something like that”. By the power of Google and with the words “Savita” and Galway”, I found her death notice on the Irish website RIP.ie, giving her full name, Savita Praveen Halappanavar, and her full address. I also got a few numbers for members of the Indian community in Galway, in the hope that someone might know something.
Among those I called was a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, long-standing member of the small Indian community in Galway and a close friend of the young couple. Dr CVR Prasad invited me to his home in Spiddal, a village about 10 miles outside Galway city. He had not only the full story of what happened, but also husband Praveen’s phone number in Karnataka state, India, where Savita had been cremated and laid to rest four days earlier.
It was about 1am in Belgaum when I called Praveen. I told him I could call him the following morning as it was late. “No,” he said, “I will talk to you now.” A quiet, gentle, heartbroken man told me the story with which many across the globe are now familiar, of how he had brought Savita to Galway University Hospital with severe back pain on 21 October, how they had been told she was miscarrying and it would all be over in a few hours. She went on to endure almost four days of physical and emotional “agony”.