Activists urge human rights court to condemn El Salvador’s abortion ban

Women’s rights activists on Monday called for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to condemn El Salvador in a case brought a decade ago by a woman who died after being forced to carry a pregnancy, although the fetus could not survive.
In February 2013, a young woman known only as Beatriz was diagnosed with her second high-risk pregnancy.
Living with lupus disease, she was told she would likely die if the pregnancy continued and anencephaly – a lethal condition under which parts of the brain and skull do not develop inside the womb – meant the fetus could not survive.
Beatriz appealed to the Supreme Court and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), but the Salvadoran court rejected her request for an abortion and in June she underwent a C-section. The child died hours later. Beatriz’ health deteriorated and she died four years later, aged 26.
s of last year, rights group estimated that more than 180 women had been prosecuted under some of the world’s harshest abortion laws, which ban abortion even when it is accidental, a result of rape or performed to save a woman’s life.
One of Latin America’s poorest countries, El Salvador at the turn of the century introduced a blanket ban on abortion, reversing earlier attempts to prevent women dying in unsafe, illegal operations.