IN late October, Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old dentist who was 17 weeks pregnant, was admitted to a hospital in Galway, Ireland, in severe pain. Doctors acknowledged that she was having a miscarriage, but over the course of three days, they reportedly refused to terminate the pregnancy and end her suffering because they could detect a fetal heartbeat. Citing Roman Catholic Ireland’s near-total ban on abortion as the reason, the physicians denied Dr. Halappanavar a procedure that most likely would have saved her life. She died Oct. 28.

When I heard the news, an alarm sounded inside. I was born and raised in Ireland, and although I now live in San Francisco, my home country’s antiquated anti-abortion laws have always rankled me. I am a sexual abuse survivor. An adult male, a family friend, periodically abused me from age 5 through age 13. My abuser could have impregnated me at a young age, and in Catholic-controlled Ireland, I would have had no legal recourse but to complete the pregnancy. Even to make my way to England, where abortion is legal, would have proved impossible without my parents’ consent and financial help. No matter my age and circumstances, my parents would never have broken with the Catholic Church and Irish government.

If I had become pregnant at 13 through rape and had the right to choose, I do not believe I would have gotten an abortion. However, I deserved that choice and that right. Every girl and woman does.

In the wake of Dr. Halappanavar’s death, protest and controversy over Ireland’s anti-abortion laws have further deepened the nation’s long-held divisions on the issue of women’s reproductive and bodily rights. Shortly after I emigrated from Dublin to San Francisco in 1992, a suicidal 14-year-old rape victim (publicly identified only as “X”) was forbidden by the attorney general in Ireland to travel to Britain for an abortion, an order her parents appealed. As a result, the Irish Supreme Court ruled to permit abortion whenever a woman’s life was at risk. However, the ruling has since been caught up in a legal quagmire and has yet to be decisively legislated. In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland must clarify the terms under which abortion is legal, something the Irish government repeatedly postponed.