“My daughter, who was diagnosed with lupus and juvenile arthritis, was told that she was going to have a girl who could not be born because she had no brain. Her condition was so delicate that they told her that her life was also in danger. The treatment was interrupt the pregnancy. She asked me to, but the doctors said they couldn’t do it because in El Salvador it’s a crime.”
The testimony of Beatriz’s mother (fictitious name to protect her identity) yesterday began the first of two days of hearings on the Beatriz case against El Salvador. The drama of this young Salvadoran woman has brought to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IDH) the most severe anti-abortion law in the Americas and whose verdict can have repercussions both in the country that sits on the bench and throughout the continent, where Nicaragua, The Dominican Republic, Haiti and Honduras also prohibit abortion with no exceptions.
“If I knew that my baby was going to survive, I would sacrifice myself, but since there is no hope…”, Beatriz told her mother, who explained to the judges that she did not understand that “if there was a treatment (therapeutic abortion) why They subjected her to that torture.” Her daughter, 22 years old and with a previous son just one year old, had to be hospitalized for 81 days during her pregnancy due to complications from the disease.
“Six out of ten women with lupus erythematosus who become pregnant suffer continuous outbreaks during pregnancy, which worsens not only the health of the mother, but also that of the fetus,” Dr. Elvira Méndez, director of the Asociación Salud y Familia, a Spanish NGO that works with one of the four plaintiff entities and that has supported the case with allegations.
Thirteen doctors from the National Maternity Hospital of El Salvador determined at 13 weeks that there was “a high risk” for the life of the mother and that the malformation of the fetus, anencephaly incompatible with extrauterine life, “was not going to be corrected.” , explained to the court the doctor who treated Beatriz, Guillermo Ortiz.
“It was the best time to terminate the pregnancy because there was not going to be fetal survival,” said Ortiz, who lamented that “we only had to take care of her health and we could not do it” because in El Salvador it is prohibited by law any type of abortion, including therapeutic.
The young woman petitioned the Supreme Court of Justice of El Salvador to terminate the pregnancy but was denied. And she took her case to the Inter-American Court, which concluded that the Salvadoran State should allow her to have a therapeutic abortion. At the 26th week of her pregnancy, the doctors finally performed a cesarean section and her fetus died five hours later. The young Salvadoran woman died in October 2017 as a result of health complications derived from a minor motorcycle accident.
“I hope that what happened to Beatriz does not happen to any woman again,” the mother asked before the highest justice body in Latin America based in San José, Costa Rica, which for the first time is discussing the absolute criminalization of abortion. in El Salvador. Ortiz said that during her career she has known cases of “many women who died due to lack of access to therapeutic abortion.”
“When the therapeutic termination of pregnancy is prohibited, not only the health of the woman is aggravated, but also that of the fetus, which cannot develop properly during pregnancy. That is why there are a large number of disabilities in countries that they forbid it,” says Méndez.
For Gisela de León, from the Center for Justice and International Law (Cejil), a human rights NGO that is among the complainants, the Salvadoran State has “violated her right to life and personal integrity” by forcing Beatriz to carry a fetus knowing that it could not live. “The suffering to which she was subjected, knowing that her right to life was threatened, constitutes a form of torture,” she added in statements to France Presse.
In El Salvador, whose president, Nayib Bukele, has publicly stated his position against abortion, women who experience pregnancy complications resulting in miscarriages and stillbirths are routinely suspected of having had an abortion and are prosecuted on charges of aggravated homicide. Since 1998, abortion has been prohibited under a prison sentence of up to eight years, which can go up to 50 years in these cases, in which the court considers that the woman has killed the fetus.
The organizations that represent Beatriz’s family in the case have affirmed that they await a sentence from the Court against the State that guarantees the interruption of the pregnancy when the life of the mother is in danger and that serves to set a precedent for other countries in the Americas. where abortion in all its forms is also prohibited.
“We hope that the ruling dictates that therapeutic abortion is a human right for women throughout the vast territory of Latin America,” says Dr. Méndez. “The hope we have is that the Court issues a ruling that determines that no woman, no girl in the Americas has to go through what Beatriz went through (…), we hope that the ruling recommends that abortion be decriminalized at least for causes,” the lawyer and activist Alejandra Burgos, also a member of the Feminist Collective for Local Development, an NGO that is among the plaintiffs, told Efe.
And that non-repetition measures be applied so that “no woman has to face the position of a non-viable pregnancy,” adds Burgos. This Thursday the second session of the hearing takes place, but it will be necessary to wait until November approximately to know the sentence.
The president of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, Ernesto Castro, said on Tuesday that “there is not the slightest possibility” that abortion will be decriminalized. “Let it be completely clear: as long as Nuevas Ideas is a majority in the Legislative Assembly, there is not the slightest possibility that abortion will be legalized in El Salvador. We defend life above all things,” Castro posted on Twitter.
