(Photo: Beatrice Murch)
El Salvador’s Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) has refused to allow a seriously sick pregnant woman to have an abortion, even though her unborn child has almost no chance of survival and is also endangering the mother’s life. The doctors were ordered to continue with the pregnancy.
The 22-year-old, referred to as Beatriz in the media, requested the abortion, because she is suffering from lupus, an autoimmune disease, and her foetus has been diagnosed with a cephalic disorder. Moreover, her unborn baby is missing a part of its brain.
The ruling comes as a blow to human rights groups and observers world-wide who have been expressing their support for Beatriz for weeks. Over 70,000 people had signed Amnesty International’s petition.
Medical staff of the hospital where they are taking care of Beatriz, as well as Ministry of Health, supported the young Salvadorian’s request, but the Supreme Court voted four-to-one in rejecting Beatriz’s appeal.
The CSJ posted their ruling on Twitter. In it, the judges wrote: “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 authorising an abortion as contrary to the constitutional protection accorded to human persons ‘from the moment of conception’.”
According to the judges, Beatriz’s health is “stable”. But the doctors who have been supporting the interruption of pregnancy have stated that “the risk to the expected mother’s health is only growing as pregnancy progresses”.
Although the therapeutic abortion plea was denied, doctors may induce premature labor, if the mother is facing an imminent risk, with the aim to “save both lives – of the mother and child at the same time”, according to José Miguel Fortín Magaña, director of the Institute of Legal Medicine (Instituto de Medicina Legal), who advises the court on medical issues.
Abortion is completely banned in seven Latin American countries, including El Salvador.
The post El Salvador: Supreme Court Denies ‘Beatriz’ Abortion appeared first on The Argentina Independent.