Summary

In Chapter 18, at the Dublin airport, Bobbi asked Frances how long she had been seeing Nick. When Frances told her, her response was a noncommittal shrug. On the bus home from the airport, Frances and Bobbi heard about the death of Savita Halappanavar via a radio report, though Frances did not mention Halappanavar by name when recounting the event to the reader. In 2012, Halappanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland, was denied an abortion by the staff at University Hospital, Galway, despite her incomplete miscarriage. The hospital staff's denial of her request was based on the argument that, at the time, abortion was illegal under Irish law, except in cases when physicians determined the continuation of a pregnancy posed an immediate danger to the life of the mother. Since the miscarriage did not proceed naturally and University Hospital denied her request for a...