The Vanishing Triangle

by Claire McGowan

I think it’s worth pointing out that the ‘eighth’ – the amendment to the constitution that banned abortion in all cases, and which the repeal campaign successfully fought to overturn – was only introduced in 1983. This led to the country having some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world; even though there was some leeway for doctors to perform one if a woman’s life was in danger, they often would not do so, afraid of prosecution. This was shown with the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland in 2012. It was an agonising case: she knew that she was having an unavoidable miscarriage and that she was dying too, and still nothing was done for her. She asked repeatedly for doctors to help hasten the miscarriage before she developed sepsis, but they refused, and so she died.