As an organisation that hears first-hand from the women who bear the burden of Ireland’s archaic abortion laws, the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar was shocking and sickening.

And yet not as surprising as you’d think.

Given that abortion laws in Ireland are among the strictest in the world, a tragedy of this kind wasn’t so much a matter of if, but when. The circumstances in which Savita died are truly abhorrent. Admitted to hospital experiencing a miscarriage at 17 weeks, despite being told that the fetus “wasn’t viable” she was made to suffer for days, left begging for an abortion that she was refused as long as there was a foetal heart beat.

For days now, I’ve been putting myself in Savita Halappanavar’s shoes.

I’m expecting. Seventeen weeks in, piercing pain sends me to the hospital. For three days, I’m miscarrying. There’s no hope for my child and my own health is fading. For three days, I’m in physical agony and doctors refuse my pleas to terminate the pregnancy to save my life. The child won’t survive, but there is a “heartbeat” and doctors fear terminating will violate my country’s laws. The unthinkable happens.

The tragedy that ended Savita’s life put a human face on the abortion issue. People are demonstrating in droves and even the Indian government is pressuring Ireland to change its laws. One demonstrator held a placard reading, “Savita had a heartbeat, too.”

Recent press about the death of Savita Halappanavar, admitted to a hospital in Ireland with medical complications in a 17-week pregnancy, is a grim reminder about the impact of abortion restrictions on women’s lives.

In Ireland, abortion is legal only to save a woman’s life. In the last two years in the United States, nine states have passed laws banning abortion after 20 weeks (in Arizona abortion is banned after 18 weeks) except to save a woman’s life. But as the death of Ms. Halappanavar so poignantly illustrates, “risk to a woman’s life” in emergency situations is extremely difficult to assess.

I would eagerly read anything written by Linda Greenhouse or Reva Siegel on the subject of abortion (or just about any topic). This dynamic duo brings to Before Roe v. Wade decades of careful study and scholarship.

Greenhouse is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who set the industry standard for Supreme Court coverage in thirty years with the New York Times (as well as author of Becoming Justice Blackmun, about Roe’s author). Siegel, a Yale Law professor, is a – to my mind, the – leading legal academic writing on abortion, from her 1992 Stanford article, Reasoning from the Body, to recent work including the shift from fetal-protective to woman-protective arguments against legal abortion.