Beatriz is a 22-year-old woman from El Salvador who is pregnant. She is being refered to as "Beatriz" to protect her privacy. She also has lupus and kidney failure. The pregnancy is putting her life at risk, but the country's Supreme Court denied her an abortion.
Abortion is illegal in El Salvador and the penalty for violating the ban is 50 years in prison. The baby that Beatriz is carrying has anencephaly (a total or partial absence of the brain), which leads to death in most babies a few days after birth.
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When the court denied Beatriz an abortion, the judges said in their ruling:
This court determines that the rights of the mother cannot take precedence over those of the unborn child or vice versa, and that there is an absolute bar to authorizing an abortion as contrary to the constitutional protection accorded to human persons "from the moment of conception."
It seems to me that not allowing a woman whose life is in jeopardy to have an abortion is giving precedence to the rights of the unborn child, who in this particular case is developing without a full brain. Jose Luis Escobar, the archbishop of San Salvador, asked the court not to allow the woman to have an abortion because it would lead to more abortion requests. Way to look out for your agenda instead of a woman whose life is in danger!
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), based in Costa Rica, ruled that El Salvador needed to take action to proctect the life of Beatriz. The court has no authority to penalize member countries, its influence is more persuasive, which may be why a day after abortion was denied, El Salvador's Health Minister approved an early Cesarean section.
So why a C-section instead of an abortion? According to Health Minsiter Maria Rodriguez, "It is very clear at this time that the pregnancy intervention is not an abortion, it is an induced birth, which is something else." Oh for crying out loud, that just sounds like some kind of nitpicking to me. We're glad at least Beatriz's life is no longer in jeopardy.
Image via Thinkstock
