El Salvador appears poised to maintain pro-life laws

Abortion activists are complaining that El Salvador seems poised to maintain its pro-life laws.

Key Takeaways:

• The 2013 case of Beatriz Garcia launched a wave of pro-abortion activism. Garcia had lupus, and asked to undergo an abortion at 18 weeks when her preborn daughter was diagnosed with anencephaly.

• Garcia died several years later from a car accident, but abortion activists have claimed her death was due to being denied an abortion.

• There have been attempts to weaken pro-life laws in El Salvador, including a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

• There have likewise been numerous false claims of women arrested due to miscarriage or stillbirth.

• Abortion activists are complaining that their "progress" in the pro-life country is "unraveling."

The Backstory:

The Beatriz Garcia case was based largely on a lie. In 2013, Garcia's lawyers argued before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice that she needed an induced abortion: the intentional and targeted killing of a preborn child. Here are the key facts:

• Garcia was 18 weeks pregnant, and though she had lupus, three doctors signed a document stating that her lupus was stable and that the pregnancy could continue.

• Garcia didn't pursue an abortion until finding out her daughter had anencephaly and would die soon after birth. She ultimately safely underwent a c-section; her daughter, Leilani, lived for several hours afterwards, and Garcia recovered from the surgery with no complications.

• At no time was Garcia's life at risk.

• Four years later, Garcia died in a motorcycle accident. Yet abortion activists have lied and said her death was due to El Salvador's pro-life laws.

Years later, the IACHR ruled that El Salvador had violated Garcia's human rights by denying her an abortion, and ordered the government to put into place “all necessary regulatory measures” to allow doctors to commit abortions in “pregnancies that pose a risk to the woman’s life and health.”

Yet the ruling notably did not call for El Salvador's pro-life laws to actually be overturned.

In addition to this case, abortion advocates have falsely claimed that women have been wrongly imprisoned for miscarriages, stillbirths, and "obstetric emergencies," but this likewise is a lie. In reality, these women were imprisoned for infanticide, with images and witness testimony revealing that these children were brutally murdered through means such as strangulation and stabbing.

The Details:

A new article in the Guardian bemoaned the supposed unraveling of pro-abortion "progress" in El Salvador. Morena Herrera, an abortion activist, echoed the usual claims: women are being wrongfully arrested simply for having miscarriages or stillbirths.

“Women go to hospitals seeking medical help, are identified as suspected of having induced an abortion and prosecuted. They are accused of aggravated homicide and face sentences of 30, 40 and 50 years in prison,” she claimed.

The re-criminalization of women, as Herrera described it, is reportedly due to the rise of a new authoritarian regime. And while there may well be political abuses taking place, the ultimate point is simply that abortion activists are failing to continue to force their advocacy on pro-life countries in Latin America, with Herrera pointing to countries like Chile and Argentina as examples.

“This government is aligning itself with the most conservative positions of other governments internationally,” she complained. “I worry that El Salvador is being held up as an example, as a model for other countries to follow. And I worry that this will become the future for women across the continent.”

The Bottom Line:

While abortion activists claim that people in El Salvador are anxious to have the ability to kill their preborn children, the pro-life laws are, in actuality, described as “too popular to overturn.”