In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist in western Ireland, became pregnant. That October, she checked into a hospital suffering acute back pains.
Doctors determined she was suffering a miscarriage. It was terribly painful. Early in their hospital stay, Halappanavar and her husband asked for medication to induce an abortion, which seemed inevitable.
But doctors refused. At the time, Irish law banned abortion upon detection of a fetal heartbeat. And even as Halappanavar bled, even as she suffered nausea and vomiting and chest pains and breathing problems, the doctors did not — or could not — provide her the treatment she needed.
