Mother still survives and dignity of baby girl upheld despite denial of so-called ‘life-saving’ abortion in El Salvador
The case of “Beatriz,” a 22 year old woman in El Salvador, who had requested an abortion because of her lupus and kidney difficulties, has been settled. Abortion is illegal in the Latin America country, for any reason. Yet because Beatriz’s health was supposedly at risk and her baby was diagnosed with anencephaly, international pro-abortion groups, including local regional coordinator and panel from the UN, became involved to request an abortion. Beatriz petitioned the Supreme Court in El Salvador to grant her an abortion two months ago, which she was recently denied last week.
For the most part, coverage from the mainstream media involved cries that Beatriz was denied a “life-saving” abortion. Well-read outlets such as The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, which also has published a letter to the editor from Nancy Northup, President and CEO of the pro-abortion group Center for Reproductive Rights, MSNBC, CBS News, and The Huffington Post have reported on the case with such suggestive and misleading titles. Only MSNBC mentions in their piece’s title that Beatriz is allowed an emergency C-Section. Beatriz may have been denied an abortion, but she was not denied life-saving treatment, a C-Section, which she survived. And although her baby girl died soon after birth due to her condition, she was allowed to die a natural death rather than death by a torturous abortion.
The Dublin Declaration states that abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of the mother. Rather, doctors instead agree that sometimes it is necessary to perform life-saving treatment to the mother which may harm or even end the life of her baby, though every effort is made to save them both. As Kate Bryan analyses for Live Action, with information provided by The Life Institute, this is in no way an abortion. With an abortion, the procedure is only successful is the baby dies. Death is the intent, rather than an unfortunate occurrence. Thus, an abortion could not be any more different of such other, truly life-saving procedures, and is pretty much the opposite.
And as it turned out, Beatriz’s life was not actually at stake. In his coverage of the case, Matthew Hoffman, Latin America correspondent for LifeSiteNews.com pointed out in his piece from May 9 that:
According to gynecologist Carlos Mayora Escobar of the El Salvador Bioethics Association, “this patient is being very well attended in the Maternity Hospital. They are monitoring her carefully. They’re watching her vital signs,” reports the Spanish Catholic activist website HazteOir.
“The reality is that Beatriz will not die if she receives the proper medical attention, which includes observation and care within a medical center,” the association added in a press release.
In his reporting of the story, for Live Action News, Josh Craddock mentioned this as well as that it was Beatriz’s doctors who suggested the C-Section, which was ultimately granted:
During the proceedings, however, medical experts testified that the pregnancy posed no serious or immediate threat to the woman’s life. El Salvador’s Institute of Legal Medicine advised against abortion and testified to the Supreme Court that “there is no medical reason to terminate the pregnancy.” Even Beatriz’s own doctors saw no need to carry out an abortion, insteadsuggesting a Caesarian section if needed.
It is not that El Salvador wanted this woman to die; after all, they did take the recommendation of a granting an early C-Section. The Court was upholding its Constitution and its laws, which recognize and protect the right to life of the unborn. To be blunt, it is worth questioning what made Beatriz’s case so different, especially if her life was not actually at risk and with abortion never actually being medically necessary. The Court was right to see the case and decide as it did, for if Beatriz was allowed an abortion, why should any other woman be denied one? If the pro-life nation were to make exceptions for the supposed life and health of the mother, it is only a matter of time before other exceptions are made.
Beatriz was exploited though by these international pro-abortion groups, and ones right in this country. Matthew Hoffman mentions this in his piece, as does Josh Craddock. When commenting on the case from a couple of months ago, also for Live Action News, Calvin Freiburger also denounced such pressure. As mentioned above, the press, for the most part, has followed this lead. In fact, a piece from May 11 from The Guardian in their opening paragraph sees the case in this light:
As she waits for a supreme court ruling that could decide whether she lives or dies, a young Salvadoran at the centre of Latin America’sabortion debate is calling on the world to respect her right to choose.
Again, although Beatriz was denied her request for an abortion, she was still given an early C-Section. And, she survived. Shouldn’t such groups, if they really care about Beatriz, welcome and celebrate this outcome. If it is truly all just about abortion then, well then they have suffered a loss, regardless of what they claim about caring for Beatriz.
AIDS 2012
A panel of speakers organized by IPPF at this years AIDS Conference represented different issues related to HIV prevention. The panel hinged on the idea that “condoms are seen as the cornerstone of effective and holistic approaches to the management of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and HIV prevention.”
However, it quickly moved beyond the issues of HIV prevention to tie the fight against this disease with a greater liberalization and acceptance of pornography, contraceptives and sexual promiscuity: the same social dysfunctions which fuel a broken society where HIV/AIDs continues to spread. The discussion included Anne Philpott from the UK’s Department of International Development and The Pleasure Project, as well as Jon O’Brien, President of Catholics for Choice. This presentation, entitled “The Politics of Condoms: Cock-ups, Controversies and Cucumbers,” lived up to the unprofessional and provocative nature of its title.
Philpott’s program is an initiative which seeks to take a “sexy approach to safer sex,” presenting male and female condoms as tools for promoting pleasure and intimacy. The Pleasure Project networks with NGOs and the public health sector in the UK along with “erotic media producers” (including one of the UK’s largest pornography developers) to promote the use of contraceptives.
Catholics for Choice’s Jon O’Brien spoke as well on the controversy of contraception. His ideas were presented a few days earlier in an editorial for Religion Dispatches posted on July 19th . There O’Brien continued his ongoing misrepresentation of the Pope’s comment in 2010 about the use of condoms. As we know, what the Pope said was, “there may be a basis. . . as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of moralization . . . But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.” Of course, the Catholic Church’s stance on prostitution and homosexual intercourse was in no way undermined by the Pope’s comment on a the hypothetical and internal moral decision making of homosexual sex workers, but it is again being abused as a way to promote the false idea that contraception saves lives.
Again, the core issue at hand with this conference is the lie that condom usage is a moral and effective method of preventing the spread of HIV. An organization in support of contraception and abortion, Catholics for Choice’s remained as silent as any other group at the AIDS conference about the fact that a single generation of monogamy, or even one where avoidance of risky behavior was prevalent, could more effectively halt the spread of HIV. The celebration of “when you want, whoever you want, however you want it” permeated the conference as a whole. In the midst of so much good will and sincere effort to stop this terrible disease, it was more than a little tragic to see the celebration and even encouragement of risky behavior take center stage.
For O’Brien’s article: The Truth About Catholics and Condoms
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