Remediating Family Photography: Savita’s Image and the Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment

Abstract

On 14 November 2012, this colour photographic portrait (see Figure 1) appeared on the front page of the Irish Times accompanying an article by Kitty Holland and Paul Cullen (Holland and Cullen, 2012: 1). It was the first time that the Irish public saw the face of Savita Halappanavar, a thirty-one year-old Indian national, who died of sepsis in a Galway hospital on 24 October. Seventeen weeks pregnant and miscarrying, she was denied a termination as a foetal heartbeat was present. Her case perfectly encapsulated the dilemma faced by medical practitioners dealing with Ireland's prohibition on abortion. When he appeared at her inquest, the former master of the National Maternity Hospital, Dr Peter Boylan, said that had she been given a termination on the day she was admitted (21 October) or the day after, 'on the basis of probabilities, Savita would still be alive (…) by the time Savita's condition worsened and termination became [legally] possible, it was too late to save her life' (McGee, 2013: 15). It is the trajectory of this vernacular portrait and its role in the years leading up to the successful campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment to the Constitution in 2018 that this paper will explore, thus showing how a commonplace photograph was propelled into the public realm, making Savita an icon and shifting the visual field from the foetus to the woman. Following its publication, Savita was to become instantly recognisable, not just in Ireland but on an international platform. Holland pinpoints how Savita's photograph moved from the domestic to the public realm: Meanwhile I got in touch with another of Savita's friends in Galway, Mrdula Vaseali asking for any memories she might have of Savita and reminding her of the need for a photograph. 'If you have a good, clear close-up that would be great,' I said … Attached to the email was a jpeg, a photograph which Mrdula said she hoped would be OK. It was that photograph, the image that was to accompany the story of The Irish Times front page and travel around the world. A dazzlingly beautiful young woman,