Shari Inniss-Grant, Fellow

Shari Inniss-Grant was a Georgetown Women’s Rights and Public Policy Fellow for Reproductive Rights at the National Women’s Law Center. She focused on researching and tracking litigation opposing the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage benefit, organizing the Reproductive Law & Policy 101 summer training, and advancing reproductive health care. While she grew up in St. Thomas, Barbados, she moved to Washington, DC to study English Literature at Howard University before attending law school. During her time at Yale Law School, Shari explored the politics of intersectionality through the Rebellious Lawyering Conference; worked with the LGBT Litigation Project; served as director for the Temporary Restraining Order Project, a domestic violence initiative; helped a client apply for legal relief through VAWA as an intern at New Haven Legal Assistance; and participated in the Lowenstein Human Right Clinic, where her small team worked with the American Civil Liberties Union to investigate the trafficking of Third Country Nationals (TCNs) on American bases by US government contractors and publish “Victims of Complacency: The Ongoing Trafficking and Abuse of Third Country Nationals by U.S. Government Contractors.”

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My Take

Abortion Can Save A Woman’s Life – And Restrictions Can End It

Posted by Shari Inniss-Grant, Fellow | Posted on: November 16, 2012 at 05:51 pm

Over the past months the nation has witnessed a heated conversation about reproductive healthcare. In several states anti-abortion law-makers have been outspoken in their attempt to convince states to deny their citizens access to abortion. Unfortunately, opposition to abortion has often been fueled by dangerous misinformation. Former Illinois Representative Joe Walsh claimed that the abortion bans he supported never endangered women’s lives or seriously threatened their health. “With modern technology, you can’t find one instance [of an abortion that saved the mother’s life]…There is no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing.”

Walsh ignores the reality that abortion is a medical procedure that can save women’s lives or improve their health. With maternal mortality on the rise, restrictive abortion policies that disregard these facts do more than overlook inconvenient truths—they can produce fatal outcomes.

In Ireland, a country with a near total ban on abortion, the procedure could have saved Savita Halappanaver’s life.

Savita Halappanaver was a young dentist attempting to start a family with her husband in Ireland. She was 17 weeks pregnant when severe back pain drove her to seek medical care at a local hospital. There she received the painful news that she was miscarrying and her fetus had no chance of survival. Knowing this and in tremendous pain, Savita asked that the doctors to terminate the pregnancy. They refused. Her family repeatedly pleaded with the hospital to treat Savita, but they only said that “Ireland is a Catholic country” and they would not abort while there was a fetal heartbeat.

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Tags: Abortion, Abortion, Reproductive Refusals & Restrictions, Barriers to Reproductive Care, Health Care & Reproductive Rights | 1 comment