Article is incomplete. Abortion is already permitted in Ireland when a woman's life in danger, as described by the guidelines of the Irish Medical Council:

"In current obstetrical practice, rare complications can arise where therapeutic interventions (including termination of a pregnancy) is required at a stage when, due to extreme immaturity of the baby, there may be little or no hope of the baby surviving. In these exceptional circumstances, it may be necessary to intervene to terminate the pregnancy to protect the mother, while making every effort to preserve the life of the baby.”

Savita Halappanavar's death is currently under investigation, because the initial cause of death is not clear. Ultimately, she died of E. coli sepsis. The initial cause could have been a kidney infection (the usual source of E. coli sepsis), which can be quite severe during pregnancy. It is also possible she had ruptured membranes resulting in a E. coli infection and miscarriage in-progress, in which case terminating the pregnancy by induction of labour is permitted in Ireland (as described above) and approved by Catholic ethicists. Her death, therefore, could have been due to either inadequate general medical care -- i.e. the failure to diagnose and treat a kidney infection.-- or inadequate obstetrical care -- i.e. the failure to induce labour, which was permitted in this circumstance. Clearly, a full investigation is required.

Yet before a full investigation has been completed, this tragic case is being used by politicians and activists with the ultimate goal of abortion-on-demand. What they really want is not abortion when a woman's life is in danger -- which is already allowed, as in the above case and in cases of ectopic pregnancy -- but abortion for other reasons. They want legal abortion to prevent children with Down syndrome and other disabilities from being born, legal abortion for birth control, etc.

Ireland, with its restrictive abortion law, has a maternal mortality rate that is lower than the United States which has liberal abortion laws. Similarly, Chile has the most restrictive abortion law in South America, and yet the lowest maternal mortality (again, lower than the United States) and also lowest perinatal mortality in the region.

A study was recently published by Elard Koch and colleagues in a peer-reviewed journal (PLOS One) which used the example of Chile, where abortion was legal and then later restricted, and showed that abortion restrictions had no effect on maternal mortality. The reasons for Chile's low maternal mortality were found to be: 1) maternal education; 2) improved prenatal care and maternal health facilities, in particular delivery by skilled providers; 3) clean water and sanitation; and 4) a paradoxical effect of reproductive history (higher primiparity was associated with lower maternal mortality, while lower total fertility rate was associated with increased mortality after controlling for other variables).

I encourage people to look more deeply into this situation, rather than what the media is reporting. A good resource is the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) -- google their website, they have an article about the situation in Ireland.

All my brothers and sisters in Ireland....I promise you our lives here in America are 54 million souls poorer since abortion was legislated for and made legal as a part of the population control program here. But next, what they are doing here in Rhode Island, Minnesota, and my very own Illinois is radically redefine what Marriage means. I wrote as many Illinois politicians as I could this message:
The state of Illinois should not attempt to redefine marriage. It is not bigotry or discrimination to treat different things differently. Marriage is unique in that one of its central components is sexual difference. Same-sex couples lack this essential difference and cannot procreate or provide both a mother and a father to children. Both reason and faith tell us that the marriage of one man and one woman calls forth the best of spouses, not only for their own sake, but also for the well-being of their children and for the advancement of the common good. Marriage generates children, is an ideal environment for raising them and is the basic building block for any human society. In the end, it is neither possible for us to change the definition of marriage, without forfeiting its meaning, nor wise to attempt to do so. Vote "no" on the redefinition of marriage!