Pro-abortion groups are pressuring the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) to condemn El Salvador for not allowing a woman to undergo an abortion in 2013 following her preborn daughter’s diagnosis of anencephaly.
The media has reported that the abortion was medically necessary due to the woman’s own lupus diagnosis and claimed that the woman died four years later after her health declined. However, her doctor never stated that she needed an abortion and the woman’s death was the result of a vehicle accident. The court is expected to rule on the case by March 23.
In a press release, the pro-life Free and Sovereign Women collective said the case of Beatriz vs El Salvador is being used by pro-abortion groups CEJIL, IPAS, and Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Therapeutic, Ethical, and Eugenic Abortion, to pressure El Salvador to legalize the killing of preborn human beings. The Free and Sovereign Women collective said the “founding document of the Inter-American System does not recognize abortion as a right, since it is not. On the other hand, it does recognize the right to life from conception (Art. 4) and the right to health (Art. 10 of the additional protocol).”
In addition, the pro-life organization is asking “that the IACHR judges not use the lives of two dead Salvadoran women [Beatriz Garcia and her daughter Leilani] to promote and impose abortion as a right in the American Continent.”
Garcia requested an abortion in 2013, stating that she was “not seriously ill, but I feel bad, because I get really tired and I’m short of breath,” adding, “I’d like to interrupt the pregnancy now.” Preborn children are protected from abortion in El Salvador, but Garcia recorded a video plea to the president to allow abortion in her case. Though the health ministry, the United Nations, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights all backed her desire to abort, doctors had said that her life was not immediately at risk. The Supreme Court of Justice refused her request for an abortion.
Three doctors from the Rosales Hospital signed a document stating that Beatriz’s lupus was stable. It was recommended by the medical team that pregnancy and medical treatment continue. Ultimately, Beatriz underwent a C-section, and her child, Leilani, died soon after birth from anencephaly, a condition in which the skull does not properly form. Beatriz died four years later following a vehicle accident after which she was admitted to the hospital for head trauma, developed pneumonia, and experienced cardiac arrest.
Pilar Vasquez, Mexican spokesperson for Free and Sovereign Women, noted that both Beatriz and her daughter Leilani “had access to medical care in accordance with their medical diagnosis.” Vasquez is also asking that instead of legalizing abortion, nations including El Salvador should be given “a solution to the real problems that affect women in the region, such as: violence, insecurity, lack of comprehensive health care, little access to education, poverty, unfair work, unprotected maternity, lack of opportunities for young people among others.”
Pro-abortion CEJIL wrote that pro-abortion groups were “motivated by the damage caused to Beatriz” and therefore filed a complaint against El Salvador before the IACHR in November 2013. Their goals were to “repair the damage suffered by Beatriz” and to “change domestic legislation to fully guarantee women the right to health, personal integrity, reproductive rights and the right to effective judicial protection.”
Yet, at the time of Beatriz’s death, the pro-life group Vida SV accused these pro-abortion groups of ignoring her medical needs.
“According to a source obtained by the journalist Miriam Muñoz, her death has been handled with secrecy by the NGOs that championed the abortion case, she said, despite the fact that Beatriz is a flagship case, the feminists did not show an attitude of solidarity after her death, they did not want the media to find out about her death,” said the group. “They could have helped her by paying for a good hospital and they didn’t, they supposedly have funds for that, but they didn’t, they only brought her flowers for her funeral.”
The pro-abortion media are manipulating the situation to falsely make it appear as though Beatriz died as a result of the pregnancy and the inability to abort.
