Savita’s death is a tragedy - shouting and debating over the loss of beautiful life

Savita Halappanavar

I was on the Al Jazeera channel on Monday discussing the death of Savita Halappanavar in Ireland.

I was struck by how, in all the shouting and debating, the soul and spirit of the young Indian woman has been lost already.

Savita died in a Galway hospital after doctors refused her request for an abortion on her fetus who they agreed was not going to live. They allegedly told her that because Ireland was a “Catholic country” she would have to wait for the heartbeat to cease.

She spent three days in terrible agony, then contracted septic shock and died.

On the show I was on the usual sides were in opposition -- those who blamed the lack of an abortion on her dying fetus as the reason why she died, and the pro-life gurus claiming that she would have died anyway from septic shock. I was there to give the American reaction.

Few referred to the fact that the death of Savita, the 31-year-old beautiful Indian woman who worked as a dentist in Ireland, is firstly an unbelievable personal tragedy.

Amidst all the recrimination and argument as to how and why she died, it appears to me the human story has been lost.

Al Jazeera played a captivating video of Savita showing off her Indian dance moves. She had the looks of a Bollywood film star and the moves of a natural dancer.

In real life this wonderful and warm Indian professional was an emigrant to Ireland, worked as a dentist in Westport, Co. Mayo and was beloved in her community. Her husband worked in Galway at an American multinational there.

She led the way teaching Indian dance to local Mayo youngsters, and was arranging the events connected with her local Indian festival when she became ill.

In the early weeks of her pregnancy her husband’s family visited, thrilled to bits at the new grandchild. One can only imagine the happy occasion, especially in a culture that adores children.

The parents were hardly back in India, however, when the complications began.

At 17 weeks pregnant, Savita was rushed to Galway Hospital with complications. We all know most of what happened next.

But what stands out in my mind is that when she asked for a termination of a fetus that could not be saved, she was told “no” and that “this is a Catholic country.”

If that is true, what kind of ignorance fueled that type of response? The woman was in excruciating pain and her doctors refused to act.

So this lovely young woman sent three days in absolute agony, a fact not disputed by anyone in this case, while doctors fulfilled some magical religious custom.

And she died and left a heartbroken husband and family behind her. Not only has her husband Praveen lost his wife but also his new baby who no doubt he was thrilled to await.

Hopefully others will not lose sight of the wonderful human life that has been lost.

Savita has now become another statistic that will fuel the incendiary abortion debate. There is no issue I know of more strongly argued and more vehemently than the issue of abortion.

Alas, Savita now becomes part of that ongoing global battle. Her story appeared on Page 3 of The New York Times this week and has sparked worldwide coverage.

But we should never forget her to be a wonderful professional woman, a wife and someone beloved by her family.

That is the real tragedy here.

GAA goes Broadway in New York as a new era dawns for Gaelic games -- Historic banquet marks major expansion by Ireland’s largest sporting group

GPA Chairman Dónal Óg Cusack pictured with GPA Chief Executive Dessie Farrell

A new era dawned for the GAA Ireland’s leading sporting organization in a New York hotel last night.

The first annual dinner of the Gaelic Players Association, the umbrella group for all the 2,500 top athletes in Gaelic football and hurling, was a smashing success with over 400 prominent Irish Americans as well as the All-Star teams from Ireland.

More importantly however, the New York dinner signaled a fresh assault by Ireland’s leading sporting organization on the lucrative overseas market where tens of thousands already play their games.

Also present last night was GAA president Liam O’Neill who spoke about the new effort to spread Irish games worldwide on the wings of emigrants and the GAA’s legendary amateur status.

Though their players fill arenas as big as Yankee Stadium, the players are unpaid and in many cases,out of pocket as a result of giving their all for Ireland’s premier sports.

It is an incredible achievement and story that deserves far greater coverage and acknowledgement over here. Playing for the love and not the money is a foreign concept in big time sport anywhere in the world except Ireland.

Read more GAA news here

Ireland’s greatest athlete is Henry Shefflin who has nine hurling all Ireland medals, the equivalent of 9 super bowl rings -- but by day he is a bank employee making a relatively modest wage.

Guest of honor on the night was Donald R. Keough, the former top Coca-Cola executive who has done more to ensure bonds between Ireland and America remain closer than ever than any Irish American alive.

He was the one, as a former Chairman of Notre Dame and founder of the Keough Naughton Irish Institute there, who was the prime mover behind Notre Dame playing in Ireland this year-- and what an incredible success that was.

Now the GAA has come to play in America and based on the overwhelming success of the GPA players first dinner, there is a bright future ahead.

The games of hurling and Gaelic football are thrilling, fast moving, and can hold their own with any games on earth. With such a plethora of sports networks now here in America it seems a wonderful opportunity to spread the games of the Gael to new worlds.

The first steps for that American presence were taken in the Marriot Marquis Hotel in New York’s theater district  last night. The GAA are finally going Broadway.

Irish government and Catholic hierarchy need to disavow reasons for death of pregnant woman -- Will they stand up and be counted on wrong application of Catholic doctrine?

Protestors gather outside Leinster House (Irish Parliament building)
 during a demonstration in favor of abortion legislation in Dublin,
 Ireland, on November 14, (Credit: Peter Muhly/AFP)

The Irish government and the Catholic hierarchy there should make clear that they strongly disagreed with the dreadful decision to allow a young mother in a Galway hospital to die because her non-viable fetus continued to have a heartbeat.

There is no other correct decision for them to make. This is not a medical issue, it is a human rights one. It is incredible to think that in this day and age such a death could occur.

The life of the mother was sacrificed in this occasion by waiting for the 17-week-old non-viable fetus to die while she was miscarrying. When she desperately asked for the fetus to be aborted she was told “This is a Catholic hospital.” She later died of sepsis.

Savita Halappanavar (31), a dentist and of the Hindu faith, originally from India, went through two and a half days of dreadful pain while the fetus lived on.

Surely the Catholic Church and the Irish government need to step in here and say “not in our name”?

The fetus would never have lived, doctors in Galway agreed. The mother was bleeding and leaking amniotic fluid.

In Britain or the US, if it were seen that the mother was in imminent danger, the mother would have been given drugs to expedite the miscarriage.

In Ireland she was told to suffer and bear it and she died as a result.

If it sounds like a terrible plot from an Edna O’Brien novel from the 1950s then it is.

One can only imagine what this lovely young woman and her husband, both emigrants to Ireland, experienced in her final hours.

It is an enormous blot on the country, a throwback to the bad old days when women’s lives in childbirth were considered expendable.

The church and state need to make it clear that it was not done in their name.

Whether they will or not will tell us a lot about the new Ireland.

 Read more: Thousands gather to protest in Ireland over death of mother due to abortion denial

Irish fight back begins in Rockaways after Hurricane Sandy devastation -- Spending time with the brave residents of a devastated beach town

The Rockaways - Once a refuge for 9/11 emergency workers Harbor Lights Pub is now destroyed

Belle Harbor, Rockaway Beach, Sunday: The cruel sea came pouring into this peninsula driven by the hurricane force winds of Hurricane Sandy.

For the first time in living memory the waters of Jamaica Bay met the Atlantic Ocean over land and left havoc and destruction in its wake.

The only frame of reference I can give you in terms of devastation is 9/11 and even that was concentrated in a small part of New York City.

I visited Ground Zero and its surrounding neighborhood just two days after that attack and Rockaway, Broad Channel, and the other communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy are déjà vu all over again.

Here in Rockaway, street after street are utterly destroyed, mounds of sand pushed in by the advancing waves clogging basements, streets, high water levels as tall as six feet destroying homes perhaps for ever.

“We will rebuild,” says Pat Nee, the proud Mayo man known unofficially as the Mayor of Rockaway, as he takes me around his destroyed neighborhood.

Pat came to Rockaway via The Bronx in 1979 and left Ireland in 1956.

At 81 he thought he had seen it all. “I had seen nothing until I saw this storm” he told me.

Down the street Brendan Brosh is newly married and had just moved with his Texas-born wife Bianca to Rockaway where he spent much of his early years. Nothing remains of his house.

He was digging the sand out of his mother’s basement as we brought a few dozen Irish breakfasts for him and his extended family and workers courtesy of my brother-in-law’s restaurant O’Neill’s. It was their first hot meal in days.

Read more news on Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath here

As they gathered round, his family told harrowing stories of the night the storm struck -- including seeing the boardwalk literally float down the street, unmoored from its concrete holdings by the power of the storm. “Surreal” said Brendan.

There are many tales of heroism which will go untold, one in particular of a woman and child saved at the last moment after she fled her home panicked as the water advanced.

Fire joined wind and water in the great destruction orgy. Houses in several streets are burnt to the ground, great tangled mess of metal and cars burnt beyond recognition.

At the Harbor Light bar at Beach and 130th Street, a forlorn shamrock flag flies while all else is in ruins, burnt to the ground.

Harbor Lights owner Bernie Heeran is one of the most beloved men in the community. He lost his son in 9/11 and his bar became a gathering place for the many heroes of that dreadful event. When it comes to cops and firefighters, Rockaway and nearby Breezy Point are Ground Zero.

The heroes this time around are the thousands of volunteers that we met from all over, armed with little more than shovels.

Among them were groups of dedicated Mormons doing sterling work, Team Rubicon, an organization composed of armed forces veterans and just ordinary folks, hundreds of friends, relatives, neighbors, and volunteers who have pitched in to try and reboot the lives of so many.

Providing food for free is Gibbons Irish Bar from Maspeth Queens, who have set up a mobile kitchen and are preparing hot meals for the many relief workers.

Providing heat in a huge “warming tent” is Navillus Construction, an Irish company we can also be proud of.

Conspicuous by their almost total absence is the Long Island Power Authority who might possibly be the worst utility company in the world, given their response to this disaster.

The Red Cross is widely criticized here too for delaying too long. “They were missing in action, It’s been friends, neighbors, volunteers,” says Brendan Brosh. “We had to fall back on our own.”

No one knows what the future holds for the newly homeless and cold and in need in the Rockaways.

What is not in question is the spirit and drive in the community which is apparent the moment you arrive there.

“We will rebuild. We will come back,” says Pat Nee. “That’s what we Irish do.”

Read more news on Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath here 

Anger towards Obama, Cuomo, Bloomberg in Irish Rockaways - President’s visit may trigger a hostile reception for governor, mayor too

Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo will accompany President Obama on his tour of ravaged areas in New York on Thursday.

Expect a hostile reception especially in the Irish Rockaways, the people that New York forgot, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.

Talking to people there the sense of betrayal is very real. “We feel utterly betrayed by the government” said one Rockaway Irish resident to me today.

The anger will not be aimed specifically at the president but for the two polls with him.

The Irish communities in Rockaway and Breezy Point have been devastated by this tragedy and the

Mayor and governor have not impressed them in this crisis.

Both came out talking a big game but failed to deliver. The result is widespread homelessness, no heat or light and people going hungry in New York.

The two pols did hold a lot of self-congratulatory press conferences though, deferring to each other as the disaster management geniuses they really seemed to believe they were.

Yet it took Bloomberg well over a week to figure out what Governor Christie in New Jersey quickly figured out. The gas shortage would lead to long lines and alternate day filling up was the smart move.

Then there was Bloomberg’s ridiculous decision to go ahead with the New York City marathon when the city was still grieving and bleeding from Sandy.

Cuomo was throwing threats at the Long Island Power Company telling them to shape up. When they didn’t he – well he huffed and puffed and did nothing.

As The New York Post noted:
“Now Cuomo’s searching out the guilty parties — but he would do well to look in the mirror before he travels too far down that road.”

Turns out Cuomo has ignored filling vacancies on LIPA’s board and refused to act after Newsday reported that LIA was in dire condition and totally unprepared for a hurricane.

The impact of all that will be clear to President Obama when he visits and sees the continuing tragedy unfold.

If the two men with him hang back and give him the spotlight it may not be political modesty, rather self-survival.

Daniel Day-Lewis is incredible as Abraham Lincoln in new film - A film that will surely touch the souls of millions who see it

Daniel Day-Lewis in "Lincoln"

Rarely in a movie theater do you feel a sharp intake of breath then hear a round of applause at the end of a film.

The tough New York crowd at the opening day of “Lincoln” however made clear their feelings after the Steven Spielberg film ended.

I think most of the applause had to be for Anglo-Irish actor Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of America’s most beloved president.

Day-Lewis didn’t just play Lincoln he inhabited him, giving him a sense of humanity and deep emotion all too rare in the usual hagiographies.

We have always know Day-Lewis to be capable of great art in his Irish movies, as Christy Brown in ‘My Left Foot’ or Gerry Conlon in ‘In the Name of the Father’ The Guildford Four movie, but as Lincoln he surpasses his own high standards.

This all too human, Lincoln, deeply grieving the death of his son, arguing constantly with his clinically depressed wife, walking the empty halls of the White House late at night too troubled to sleep is a powerful portrait.

Above all the nobility of his cause comes through. Has there ever been such a struggle in this country as the battle to end slavery?

Day-Lewis plays Lincoln as a deeply divided soul, wondering whether the best objective is to end the war and deal with slavery later as most of his advisors urge, or force the 13th amendment through, come hell or high water.

The interior life of Lincoln is revealed, the man who disliked and was disliked by his father, the rough and ready plainsman ready with a bawdy joke or a funny story, the conflicted father when his oldest son wants to sign up for the army he is commander-in-chief of, the wordsmith like no other composing his Gettysburg Address and second inaugural speech, two of the most powerful pieces ever written

Day-Lewis al portrays Lincoln as a cunning politician, ready to use whatever tools at his disposal to pass the 13th Amendment banning slavery.

He is not too “Honest Abe” to countenance blatant bribery, not too proud to plead cajole and beg votes from Democrats he needs, not too saintly to let loose with profane invective and lashing out when his cabinet disagrees with him.

His genius was that it was all for a greater cause, can there ever have been a more worthy one?

He recalls seeing a boatload of black slaves in chains going down the Mississippi river when he was a child. It let a permanent mark on him.

This film will touch everyone who sees it and I urge you to go and bring your loved ones. It shows how magnificent a leader and yet how ordinary a man our most beloved president was. It touches the soul as surely as Lincoln did to so many in his own time.

Election night, Barack Obama’s re-election and Rory Staunton -- There is far more to this world than we have figured out just yet

Rory Staunton

There were few bigger fans of Barack Obama than 12-year-old Rory Staunton. His father, Ciaran, had brought him to the White House to the Irish celebration on St Patrick’s Day in 2011 and he had met the president and the first lady.

To say he was proud as punch was an understatement. When the president stopped on the rope line and briefly chatted with him, Rory was in seventh heaven.

Rory was the kind of kid who lived and breathed politics anyway, so the Obama meeting set him even more on a course that his parents and I, as his uncle, thought would surely bring him into politics some day.

He worshiped John F Kennedy too and featured him on his Facebook page as a hero. He already understood what it meant for an Irish Catholic in 1960 to make it to the White House at a time just one generation removed from ‘No Irish Need Apply’ signs.

Rory was already spreading his own civil rights message. In his school he began a campaign to “Spread the word to end the word,” the word was “retard”, and Rory was determined that its use be ended.

In late March when Rory became ill with sepsis after receiving a cut in a basketball game at school and was misdiagnosed at NYU Langone hospital, he was rushed back there the second day when he was clearly very sick.

Doctors wanted to measure his mental status and asked him two questions.

“Who is President of the United States?”

“Who will be the next President of the United States?”

"OBAMA. OBAMA."

Those were the last words he ever spoke before going into a coma.

After he died the President sent a beautiful letter. To say we were rooting for his re-election was putting it mildly.

That is why I missed Rory so much on election night this week. We sat in Rory’s house in Queens watching the returns come in, missing the big redhead on the couch who would surely have thrown a wad of facts and figures at us to beat the band and bore us all explaining the electoral college to anyone who would listen.

Though the race seemed close in the early states we figured Rory would take care of any minor problems in Obama’s path to re-election.

We all sensed he was with us -- just a feeling, hard to explain. To me there is far more to this world than we have figured out just yet.

Election night was just one more instance of that.

Twice that night the doorbell rang in Rory’s house and when we went outside to open the door there was no one there.

I remember sitting with Ron Clifford who lost his sister and his little niece on 9/11 when the television in his front room suddenly came on, frightening the wits out of me as no one was near.

Ron explained to me how the lights often flickered mysteriously especially when he was discussing them.

So, yes I do think Rory was there in some way with us on election night and that he celebrated with us around 11.15pm when Ohio put the president over the top.

Yeats wrote: “Come away O human child
To the waters and the wild
With the fairies hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

And more full of wonder and mystery sometimes too. Like when a doorbell rings and no one is there.