A two-part special, 7.00pm, RTÉ One, Tuesday December 3rd and 10th.
The tragic death of Savita Halappanavar in a Galway hospital changed Ireland forever. In October 2012, Savita Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant with her first baby, was admitted to University Hospital Galway with an impending miscarriage. She asked for a termination, but a week later Savita had died from septic shock. 12 years after her death, this special two-part Scannal, to air December 3rd and 10th on RTÉ One at 7pm, examines why Savita died, and how the news of her death provoked a national debate. Some claim she died due to failures in her medical treatment, while others believe the controversial 8th Amendment to the Irish Constitution prevented the doctors from giving her a life-saving abortion in time. What is undisputed is that Savita’s death changed this country forever and helped usher in legal abortion in Ireland for the first time.
SCANNAL: SAVITA Episode 2, December 10th on RTÉ One at 7pm
Savita Halappanavar’s tragic death in Galway in 2012 brought the abortion issue back into the headlines and changed Ireland forever. In the second episode of Scannal: Savita, reporter Caoimhe Ní Laighin looks back on the aftermath of 31-year-old Savita Halappanavar’s tragic death, which outraged many people and eventually helped to usher in legal abortion in Ireland.
In October 2012, Savita Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant and suffering a prolonged miscarriage, when she died in University Hospital Galway from septic shock. She had asked for a termination a few days earlier, but this was denied, because, at the time, abortion was illegal in Ireland unless there was a real and substantial risk to the mother’s life. A few weeks later, Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland broke the story of Savita’s tragic death. Many Irish people were shocked that something like this could happen in modern-day Ireland. The story was widely reported around the world and within days, people gathered to hold vigils and marches across the country.
On one side, Pro-Choice campaigners began to demand a repeal of the controversial 1983 8th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave the unborn child the same right to life as the mother. They took to the streets, demanding a change in the law, and for women’s right to choose whether or not to continue with a pregnancy. On the other, Pro-Life advocates insisted that it was medical mismanagement of the sepsis, and not the 8th Amendment, that had claimed Savita’s life.
Over the next year, two different inquiries, as well as an inquest, examined what caused Savita’s death, and how it could have been prevented. In a rare interview, Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, former President of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, who chaired the HSE Inquiry into Savita’s death, discusses its key findings.
