By Nelson Renteria
SAN SALVADOR, May 31 (Reuters) – The woman at the center of
an abortion controversy in El Salvador will be granted a
Caesarean section to end a pregnancy endangering her life and
avoid breaking the law in the Central American nation.
El Salvador’s health ministry said late on Thursday doctors
attending the woman, who uses the name “Beatriz” to protect her
identity, could perform a Caesarean to remove her malformed
fetus and circumvent an abortion, which is illegal there.
The announcement came after a non-binding resolution by the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights that called on El Salvador
act to save the life of the 22-year-old woman after it denied
her an abortion.
El Salvador banned all types of abortion in 1999, but
Beatriz’s fetus has a serious condition known as anencephaly
that results in only partial brain development. Such a fetus has
little or no chance of surviving after birth.
Beatriz, who is 26 weeks pregnant, suffers from lupus and
kidney problems, posing a grave threat to her own health.
“I feel good because next week they will perform (a
Caesarean). Right now, the doctors have not told me anything,
but I believe everything will work out fine,” she said in a
brief phone interview with Reuters late on Thursday.
The Caesarean section offers El Salvador a way out of the
legal wrangle surrounding Beatriz’s desire for an abortion.
This week El Salvador’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal to
grant one on the grounds it breached the constitution.
The case has drawn attention to abortion in El Salvador and
attitudes towards the procedure in predominantly Roman Catholic
Latin America. Some countries such as Colombia are relaxing
their rules in order to permit abortions in the case of rape.
(Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Dave Graham and Vicki
Allen)
