Ladies! How I've missed regaling you with abortion-related stories from around the world that make you want to cross your legs, clutch your uterus, and reach for a drink. For instance, remember when hospital staff in Ireland let a woman slowly die from sepsis in 2012 rather than offer her a life-saving abortion (because, you know, abortion kills)? But then, you'll recall that after the ensuing global outcry, Ireland passed a new law supposedly aimed at protecting the health of soon-to-be mothers, granting them access to abortions when their lives were at stake or if they were suicidal?

The Guardian examines how well that's working out (gird your livers, this one's a doozy):

The unnamed woman, now 18, was reportedly raped as a minor and sought an abortion just eight weeks into her pregnancy. Even after experts found her to be suicidal – a prerequisite for abortion under a new Irish law – she was denied access to the procedure. According to a report by the Sunday Times, the woman, who is not an Irish citizen, believes that the government deliberately delayed her case – both through the state’s decision to ignore psychiatric experts and via her inability to travel because of her legal status – so that she would have to carry the pregnancy at least through the fetus’s viability. After going on a hunger strike, she was forced to undergo a caesarean section at just 25 weeks into her pregnancy.

That’s 17 full weeks after she first sought help.

Here in the US, abortion is supposedly still legal, but lawmakers in many states are doing just what Ireland did: drawing up complicated rules and regulations to make it all but impossible to safely access abortion services. And as the Guardian points out, if your city or county doesn't have an abortion provider and you can't afford the time off work or the money needed to travel and pay for the procedure, it's functionally prohibited.