I don't tell religious people what to do with their lives. I'd thank them to extend me the same courtesy (the same RIGHT). And this is why I am so rabidly anti-religion.
Oh, and just for an ironic twist: While Catholics in Ireland are happy to kill expectant mothers, Catholics in Massachusetts refuse to let *anyone*, Catholic or not, die if they're going to die in absolute agony a few months later.

"Pro-life" is a misnomer, a fantastically fascist euphemism. "Forced-birther" is the correct term.

I really wish we could have an honest, open, intellectual discussion about abortion in this country. Sadly, Jesus-humping idiots like our resident trolls (see @3) won't allow it. Leaving innocent women to die of avoidable complications, for the beliefs of others.

To the cowardly, unregistered "BabyKiller":

But that's the point, isn't it? That an adult human being was murdered to satisfy your lust for something that would never live to become a baby, no less an adult.

In your world, women are expendable, kill them for potential humans, or even a fetus which will never become a person.

Women are being killed, in your world for your particular twisted version of theology, and that's all I need to know about you.

All we need to do is outbreed the anti-choicers. Much like the troll and the homophobes, they're a dying breed. It's going to take time, but we'll get there in the end. The cold, hard fact of it is the religious zealots are dinosaurs, incapable of change. And evolution is a BITCH to the niche species.

Or we'll all die in the zombie apocalypse. One or the other.

As for the cowardly, unregistered comment from "Two Many Babies": the "incompetency" shown by the medical staff was their adherence to an anti-abortion law.

So, no legal basis for a malpractice suit.

Also: In 2009, thein-hospital mortality rate for septicemia was about 16 percent.

The pregnancy-associated mortality rate among women who delivered live neonates was 8.8 deaths per 100,000 live births.

The mortality rate related to induced abortion was 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions. In the one recent comparative study of pregnancy morbidity in the United States, pregnancy-related complications were more common with childbirth than with abortion.

CONCLUSION:
Legal induced abortion is markedly safer than childbirth. The risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than that with abortion. Similarly, the overall morbidity associated with childbirth exceeds that with abortion.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270…

Abortion is safer than Septecemia, or childbirth.

But facts never dissuade a right-wing forced birther, in their dirty lust for more dead women.

Oh, I looooooooooooooove the rightwingnut comments that postulate this woman might have died some other way.

Sure, she might have died had she been hit by a bus, in Wingnut Bizarro World.

But back here in the all-too-real world, this woman was murdered by a medically unsound anti-abortion law.

And you wingnuts helped!

In Wingnut Bizarro World "preserving a fetus that could not possibly survive was more important than an actual, breathing, otherwise healthy and lively woman."

"An academic at USCF just released longitudinal research called the Turnaway Study, which looks at what happened to women who couldn’t get abortions because they were too far along—and compared their mental, physical, and economic health to similar women who did have abortions.

You’ll be absolutely shocked to learn that the women who had abortions fared much better than the women who were forced to carry the pregnancy to term. Their mental health was better. Their physical health was better. Their economic circumstances were more stable. They had fewer regrets.

The women who had been unable to get abortions were more likely to stay trapped in abusive and violent relationships. They were physically less healthy. They were more likely to be stressed, exhausted, and unhappy. They and their children were more likely to live in poverty and to be on public assistance."
http://prospect.org/article/dying-pro-li…

Here's another piece of (unregistered) WingNut (Not) Logic:

"Savita was lucky she got to live as long as she did, because she might have been aborted in India for being a female fetus."

Wow, a lot of illogical "might have beens" there to unpack.

But factually, Savita's parents DIDN'T ABORT, they lived the pro-life position, unlike the supposed "pro-life" law, that killed their daughter.

Her parents' reward for that "pro-life" position?

While mourning the grandchild who didn't have a chance at life, they must also mourn for their daughter murdered by an anti-abortion law -- along with any other grandchildren she might have given them.

There's one logical, and heartbreaking, "might have been."

@3 strikes me as a tad racist.

And if Ireland indeed has a "Health of the Mother" exception, then the medical staff likely have some liability. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I can't imagine it'll go well for the Irish.

Ireland may have a "Health of the Mother" exception, but what that is has never been spelled out by the legislature.

Whereas "Fetal heartbeat" has been spelled out legally, so the hospital followed the murderous anti-abortion law, as it was written.

The only liablility involved is that of the morally bankrupt forced birthers.

This is how morally bankrupt the forced birthers are, what they foment for will induce more abortions. and more deadly abortions.:

"Such deaths are still happening in anti-abortion countries today. In Argentina, the health ministry estimates that one-third of maternal deaths come from illegal abortions. According to the International Planned Parenthood Federation:

Across Latin America … [t]he restrictions placed on access to legal abortion have not made the practice scarce. In Argentina, an estimated 40 percent of all pregnancies terminate in induced abortions. In Peru, that proportion is 37 percent, and in Chile 35 percent.; Most other countries in the region, including Mexico but also the United States, maintain a 20 percent ratio—one induced abortion for every 4 live births.

In fact, if you look at criminal law as only one of many potential policy instruments to affect the social phenomenon that is abortion, it would appear to be a very ineffectual choice: where abortion is illegal, it is equally—if not more—prevalent than in jurisdictions where it is legal. Also where abortion is illegal, it is much more likely to be unsafe. “You get overwhelmed by desperation,” a thirty-five-year-old mother of ten children told me in Argentina. “You seek all the ways out, pills, anything. But if there is no way out, then you take a knife or a knitting needle.”
http://prospect.org/article/dying-pro-li…

@18,

And, Savita was originally from India. The stupidity of anti-choice trolls never fails to amuse me.

I've traveled the world, and without exception, every country I've been to that is predominately Catholic has a markedly worse standard of living than the non-Catholic countries. Hopelessly backwards, twisted and kinky religion. "Save them babies and no birth control- can't feed your 16 kids? God's will."
Religion ruins everything.

Moral of the story, at least for me: Never visit an anti-choice country while pregnant.

Even if they wouldn't deliver the fetus, why weren't pumping her full of antibiotics? It's standard procedure. What makes me even more angry are the comments being made by caregivers at other Irish hospitals who are saying she met the criteria for assisted termination under Irish law.

@10: "Biology tells us that human life begins at conception"
No it doesn't. Biology tells us that life began roughly 3.5 to 4.0 billion years ago, and life that is recognizably human began somewhere between 2 million and 250 thousand years ago. There is no way to draw a sharp line between the life of the parents alone and the additional existence of the progeny. You arbitrarily place the boundary at conception, when you might just as easily justify placing it at meiosis, or parturition, or the end of embryogenesis, or the maturation of the progeny.
Again you misrepresent science in order to give your opinions a semblance of credence.

@7: Don't insult dinosaurs that way! One lineage did adapt and is still around today, and in greater diversity than mammals.

"And he told Reuters, "I am still in shock. It is hard to believe that religion can mean somebody's life.""

Jesus fuck! You'd think he's never heard of raging mobs of differing religions slaughtering each other or anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_o…

@25,

Is there evidence that they weren't? Even if they were, she wouldn't have survived. You can't treat a gangrenous limb with antibiotics, and that's pretty much what was going on inside her body.

For many of the most vocal nut jobs it just isn't about "teh baybeez" but rather subjugation of women to brood mare status... "cute wittle baybeez" are just an easier sell :/

Ireland does have an exception for the life of the mother. In that regard, it's more progressive than the GOP's stated platform.

Republicans apparently would be fine with this woman dying - even if they knew the baby would die as soon as it was born. Because Life.

@30: No it doesn't. Conception produces a zygote. New (unique) genome occurs at meiosis. New individual occurs at parturition (physiologically) or maturation (from the standpoint of population genetics). Seriously, stop making shit up.

What happened is horrible.

I wish there was LESS religion in this stupid fucked up world. Religion makes heartless killers out of intelligent people.

Dan-Every time you comment on "lady issues" you make me love you even more. You're an exceptional human.

I'm no longer a serious Catholic, but I have studied Catholic theology at a graduate level and was a practicing and serious Catholic for years. The problem here isn't Catholicism or even Ireland's abortion laws. Catholic teaching would have permitted - without any hesitation - inducing labor in a case like this, for the purpose of saving the mother's life, even if the secondary effect would likely to be a stillbirth. This is the principle of double effect, and it was taught by Thomas Aquinas. The only thing that is prohibited is direct abortion; medical actions taken for another purpose that may lead to a miscarriage are not prohibited. Regardless, Ireland's abortion laws allow direct abortion if the mother's life is at risk. The REAL problem here is that a bunch of idiot doctors, who probably know plenty about medicine but nothing about law or about their own religion, were allowed to make a decision to withhold treatment without any sort of review. There should be an ethics board, a general counsel, a court, even a godd-mn canon lawyer to tell the doctor's what to do in this case. This isn't the Church's or Ireland's fault. It's the fault of incompetent, ill-informed, heartless doctors.

I think the bottom line we can glean from our unregistered troll is that right wing religious folks simply don't like other humans. They don't understand compassion, thinking that it's a tool of manipulation, demanding that others give them compassion while never offering it to others.

Because we're really machines, tools, there to serve some abstract "good" and no more. You get the code, the commandments, and that's it. Obey them, get to heaven, end of story. That's the life of a robot. And that's really the greatest tragedy here, where the human doctors and nurses choose to be nothing more than robots, obeying a useless code, instead of looking into their hearts and understanding that we're all in this together.

I believe I know what was going through their minds as they moved about the hospital while Savita screamed in agony: Nothing. They had shut off.