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SAN JOSE/SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) – El Salvador violated a woman’s rights after denying her an abortion in 2013 despite doctors’ calls to terminate her high-risk pregnancy, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights said on Friday ( IACHR).
The case of the woman, a domestic worker known as Beatriz, became a symbol of the general ban on abortion in El Salvador, which punishes those who undergo the procedure, perform it or assist with it with prison sentences.
The court’s decision found the Salvadoran state “internationally responsible for failing to comply with its duty of due diligence to guarantee Beatriz’s rights of access to effective judicial remedies, personal integrity, health and privacy,” the court said in a statement.
Doctors diagnosed Beatriz, 22, with lupus and other ailments, her second high-risk pregnancy in February 2013, and said the fetus would not survive the pregnancy. They recommended an abortion but did not perform the procedure given El Salvador’s severe prohibition.
Beatriz appealed to the Supreme Court, which rejected her request. In June 2013, a cesarean section was performed and her daughter died hours later.
Beatriz died in 2017 due to complications from a motorcycle accident that occurred on the way to a medical appointment.
The IACHR said that there was no proven causal relationship between Beatriz’s death in 2017 and the medical care during her second pregnancy in 2013, so it did not rule on state responsibility for her death.
In its ruling, the IACHR ordered El Salvador to implement measures such as the creation of guidelines and protocols for medical and judicial personnel to guarantee legal clarity and adequate attention in similar cases.
“The lack of legal certainty regarding the handling of Beatriz’s case led to the bureaucratization and judicialization of the necessary medical care, resulting in multiple consequences,” says the IACHR statement.
The office of El Salvador’s president did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Beatriz’s mother, known publicly only as Delmy, celebrated the ruling alongside Beatriz’s brother and women’s rights activists.
“I know it has not been easy, but the State has the duty and the right to respond to the measures that the court has imposed and for me it is a great victory,” he stated.
