Emma Watson pens moving open letter to Savita Halappanavar, who died after being denied an abortion
On Oct. 28, 2012, Savita Halappanavar died in University Hospital Galway, Ireland, due to complications of a septic miscarriage after being denied an abortion.
Her death — which an inquest ruled was caused by "medical misadventure" — was the catalyst for Ireland's historic abortion referendum.
Six years on from Savita's preventable death, Emma Watson has penned a moving open letter to the 31-year-old woman.
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"You didn’t want to become the face of a movement; you wanted a procedure that would have saved your life."
"Dear Dr Savita Halappanavar," wrote Watson in the letter published in PORTER magazine. "You didn’t want to become the face of a movement; you wanted a procedure that would have saved your life."
"When news of your death broke in 2012, the urgent call to action from Irish activists reverberated around the world – repeal the Eighth Amendment of the Irish Constitution," she added.
Watson wrote that "time and time again" when someone dies due to social injustice, "we pay tribute, mobilise, and proclaim: rest in power."
"A promise to the departed and a rallying call to society, we chant: never again. But it is rare that justice truly prevails for those whose deaths come to symbolise structural inequality," she wrote. "Rarer still is a historic feminist victory that emboldens the fight for reproductive justice everywhere."
Watson also talked about Savita's family's contribution to the Together for Yes campaign in support of repealing the 8th amendment of the country's constitution — which made abortion illegal in almost all cases.
"Celebrating repeal, your father expressed his 'gratitude to the people of Ireland,'" wrote Watson. "In reciprocity, I heard Ireland's 'repealers' say that they owe your family a great debt."
"A note on your memorial in Dublin read, 'Because you slept, many of us woke.' That the eighth amendment enabled valuing the life of an unborn foetus over a living woman was a wake-up call to a nation," wrote Watson. "For you, and those forced to travel to the UK to access safe, legal abortion, justice was hard-won."
Watson wrote that the fight for reproductive justice around the world would continue in Savita's memory.
"In your memory, and towards our liberation, we continue the fight for reproductive justice."
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
