I refer to Martin Scicluna’s article ‘Pro-choice Irish’ (May 30), which was fair and balanced but has one glaring omission: the case of Savita Halappanavar, who died in hospital in Ireland after being refused an abortion, even though her miscarriage was deemed inevitable.

Savita, a 31-year-old Indian dentist, was admitted to University Hospital Galway on October 21, 2012, when she was 17 weeks pregnant with her first child. Medical staff concluded that a miscarriage was inevitable but, despite repeated requests from her and her husband for an abortion, they did not intervene as a foetal heartbeat could still be detected. A few days later, she miscarried, rupturing membranes and then dying from septic shock. An inquest jury returned a unanimous verdict of medical misadventure and thousands of people took part in candlelit vigils and protests across Ireland, calling for changes to allow women to have access to legal abortions.

An independent inquiry found there had been an “overemphasis on the need not to intervene until the foetal heart had stopped” as well as “poor patient monitoring and risk assessment”.

It also strongly recommended that the Irish Parliament consider changing the law and make “any necessary constitutional change”.

Her death gave impetus to the movement to repeal the eighth amendment. In the run-up to the referendum, Sir Sabaratnam Arulkumaran, chairman of the inquiry and president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics and now president of the British Medical Association, publicly called on voters to back the repeal of the clause, saying it “tied doctors’ hands”.

In media interviews, Savita’s husband, Praveen, said that after her admission to hospital they had repeatedly asked for the pregnancy to be terminated but they were told: “This is a Catholic country.”

It is said that hard cases do not make good law and, maybe, Ireland will go too far but it is to be hoped that it will not require another Savita to untie doctors’ hands in Malta.