Dead, Brainless Baby + Tortured Woman = All Good

So, the El Salvadoran woman known as Beatriz was *granted* a C-section at 27 weeks to save her life and the brainless baby has, as expected, died.

Latin America, like Ireland, pretends it doesn't have an abortion problem.

But it sure does.

Despite the region’s tough abortion laws, there has not been a drop in abortion rates.

In fact, they have had the opposite effect.

According to a 2008 study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Guttmacher Institute, Latin America has one of the world’s highest abortion rates, with 31 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, compared to 12 per 1,000 in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds.

According to WHO, botched abortions are a leading cause of maternal death in all parts of the world, accounting for 12 percent of maternal deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean, based on 2008 figures.

These laws cause not only needless death and suffering, but also the criminalization of miscarriage and obstetric complications.

Since abortion was made illegal in El Salvador in 1998, 628 women have been jailed for having abortions, according to local rights group Citizens for the Decriminalisation of Abortion (CFDA).

In 2010, the case of one Salvadoran, known as Manuela, shows how women end up paying with their lives because of the country’s absolute abortion ban.

Manuela, who suffered from advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after suffering severe complications giving birth.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which campaigned on her behalf, doctors treated her as if she had attempted an abortion and immediately called the police. She was shackled to her hospital bed and accused of murder.

Manuela did not receive appropriate medical treatment for lymphoma, the rights group says, and died less than a year after being sent to prison, leaving behind two young children. Her case was put before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2012.

On Twitter, someone sensibly asked 'WTF was the point of dragging Beatriz through all that?'

Answer is simple. So the fetus fetishists can maintain their fantasy that abortion is never medically necessary.

Claudia Handal, a spokeswoman for the anti-abortion group Red Familia, said the rights of all had been respected.

"We're very happy because as we said from the beginning, it wasn't necessary to perform an abortion, the point was to respect the baby's life and to give Beatriz the care and the right to health that she deserved," Handal told Reuters.

See? It's all good.

UPDATE: Actually, a correction. Beatriz did not have a c-section, she had a very high-risk procedure called a hysterotomy. The bullshit gets piled higher and deeper to perpetrate the denial that abortion is frequently a life-saving measure.