Savita Halappanavar

In a couple of hours I will be leaving for a cruise on the Seine that will take me from Paris to Normandy and back. I am still unpacked. But I wanted to quickly write this entry. 

I am worried about the hundreds of rockets that have been flying between Israel and Gaza, killing fifteen Palestinians and three Israelis by the time of this writing. I am distressed about the violence and its potential ramification on the Egyptian-Israeli and Israeli-Jordanian peace, and on the rest of the volatile Middle East. I am distressed about the range of Hamas’s rockets that have landed in central Israel, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But I question the wisdom of the assassination of Ahmed Jabari, though I agree that Israel had to respond to the continuous shelling of its civilian population by extremist Islamic groups in Gaza and to Hamas’s unwillingness or inability to stop it. 

But the events in the Middle East, though close to my heart, are not what I wanted to write about so hastily. What I want to address as a woman is the death of Savita Halappanavar, the 31-year-old Indian woman whose life was sacrificed in the middle of a miscarriage in the name of the right of the unborn.
It happened in Ireland, a member of the European Union, which together with UN Women is actively involved in protecting and promoting women's rights.

Her doctors’ refusal to perform an abortion because her fetus’s heart was still beating even though it could not survive in its mother’s womb was irrational because it endangered her life unnecessarily. Savita’s grieving mother and husband adequately and painfully expressed the absurdity of that decision, which was based on a 1983 amendment to the Irish constitution, guaranteeing the right to life of the unborn. 

While it is not surprising that the “right to life” groups in Ireland rushed to deny that an abortion might have saved Savita’s life, it is encouraging to see the many demonstrators, man and women alike, who demand the immediate legalization of abortion in Ireland, reopening the abortion debate in that Catholic country. 

Savita’s unnecessary and tragic death should not only do the same in post election America, but it the rest of the world. The United Nations Population Division and UN Women could lead the way.  This women’s rights matter is a human rights issue. 

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Sandy

Though I had recognized it could be viewed tactless, initially I supported Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to hold the NY's Marathon as scheduled, believing it would imitate a return to normalcy after the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. 

Living on the seventeenth floor in a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and hardly affected by the storm (though my neighborhood was flooded by the East River) I could afford such thinking. But as the suffering faces of those who were less fortunate than I kept appearing on TV, especially residents of Staten Island (from where the Marathon was to start), I became increasingly ambivalent about holding the race this weekend. 

But then I walked in Central Park today, as I had done yesterday and the day before, and I made up my mind, siding with those who demanded that the Marathon be canceled or postponed. 

Deviating from my regular path, I found myself at the finishing line of the canceled Marathon, where one could hardly recognize that the event was canceled: Amid cheering crowds there were hundreds of registered runners who refused to let the canceled race spoil their plans.  Many wore their orange shirts, some with their bibs attached. Their resilience was not what bothered me. On the contrary.

Before calling off the race the mayor had assured Staten Islanders and residents of other devastated communities, who were both angered and offended by the Mayor’s original decision, that the resources they needed for recovery would not be channeled toward the Marathon.  But it could hardly be the truth. When I looked today at the completed preparations for the race, including the park cleanup after the storm, the installed bleachers and the portable toilets, I knew the preparations 

required many working hands that should have been cleaning Sandy’s aftermath in those destroyed communities. 

As for the storm, first I watched it through my windows. The East River promenade and the FDR were immersed in water, transformed into one big river. I dared to go out onto my terrace, seeing nature in its mighty grandeur. The sight was fierce but awesome. Standing on the 17^th floor feeling the strong winds and seeing the gushing river was a powerful experience. Then, like a few other crazies from the neighborhood I went down to the water to take pictures. The wind was ferocious, knocking down trees, the water mad. It was truly unforgettable.

My daughter, her husband, and my two grandchildren, who live in Long Island, have been staying with my husband and me since last Sunday. They have had no power in their home and it may not return for another week. Cousins who live in downtown Manhattan had no power till Friday. They came to our home daily to bath and charge their electronic devices. I have been cooking and cleaning round the clock, playing with and reading to my grandchildren, feeling extremely lucky in the aftermath of Sandy. 

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