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Savita Halappanavar is a name that many people outside of Ireland are unfamiliar with, including myself until recently.
Whereas, those inside the boundaries of the predominantly Catholic country know of her and her plight all too well — some more intimately than others despite never meeting her.
Halappanavar, 31, was an Indian woman who died in 2012 at a hospital in Galway, Ireland, due to complications that arose after she suffered a septic miscarriage, according to Buzzfeed.
Buzzfeed reports Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant and had been informed by doctors a miscarriage was inevitable, so she requested an abortion to avoid the high risk of infection.
She was denied after a medical team determined her case wasn’t severe enough to warrant the illegal procedure, which was only allowed when the mother’s life was in extreme and immediate peril, according to Buzzfeed.
As a result, Halappanavar passed away a week later from the very infection she was hoping to prevent by having the abortion.
But yet, her story lives on.
Buzzfeed reports candlelit vigils erupted across the country and many murals of Halappanavar were painted in the wake of her death, which still remain on several cities’ walls throughout the European nation.
She also became the face of the “Yes” campaign, a movement dedicated to decriminalizing abortion across the globe in an effort to prevent all women from sharing Halappanavar’s unfortunate fate.
On May 26 — six years after her tragic death — a referendum rendered no women in Ireland would ever be denied an abortion again, no matter their reason for undergoing the procedure, according to The New York Times.
The Washington Post reports the poll brought in a historic turnout with thousands of Irish citizens flocking back to their native land just to cast their vote in either support or dissent.
Irish officials reported 66.4 percent were favor of overturning the restrictive law, while 33.6 percent opposed the measure, according to the Washington Post.
Before the landmark decision, women wanting an abortion had to travel to another country to do so or resort to various unsafe methods that cost many their lives. If they were caught, they risked ending up in jail for up to 14 years, according to The New York Times.
However, many countries still have laws that are even more strict, such as El Salvador, Malta, Chile and the Dominican Republic, who each refuse to grant an abortion even to save a mother’s life.
According to Business Insider, “Developing countries, which have the strictest laws around ending a pregnancy, have the highest unsafe abortion rates. It is estimated that around the world, 78,000 deaths result from unsafe abortions every year.”
Women deserve complete authority over their bodies in any nation, especially when their health is on the line.
I do not want any government, religious or medical official to dictate what I can and cannot do with my body — more importantly, I shouldn’t have to when it means life or death.
Halappanavar is one of thousands who died as a result of this type of intolerance toward women and their access toward proper healthcare, which is unacceptable.
No nation can expect to move forward if they retain draconian ideals that oppress half their population by refusing to offer that same sect a basic right to their own body. Ireland was able to do an incredible thing for its citizens by recognizing that.
Granted, it shouldn’t have taken until 2018 to do so, but it’s a start, and now, other countries around the globe need to follow suit.
The decision to terminate a pregnancy is difficult and complicated, it shouldn’t be made even more challenging by lack of appropriate access.
Olivia Heersink can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @heersinkolivia