“The state cannot interfere arbitrarily” in women’s decisions about their reproduction, said the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on the last day Thursday of a hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. man who leaned for the first time in his history on the right to abortion.
Based in Costa Rica, the Inter-American Court examined for two days the case of a young woman, “Beatriz”, prevented from terminating a high-risk pregnancy in El Salvador, one of the countries with the most restrictive laws in the world in this area. .
El Salvador “engaged its responsibility by omission” because the law of the country “did not guarantee (to the young woman) access to an abortion”, estimated Tania Reneaum, executive secretary of the IACHR, representing the prosecution in this trial. “The state cannot arbitrarily interfere” in women’s decisions about their reproduction, she added.
“The right to life, personal integrity, health and privacy (…) has been limited due to the criminalization of abortion”, added Julissa Mantilla, rapporteur for El Salvador of the IACHR, which reviews cases before bringing them to the Inter-American Court.
In defense of the Salvadoran state, lawyer Ana Maria Hidalgo argued that the American Convention on Human Rights stipulates that all people are considered “human beings without distinction”. “This case concerns two human beings and therefore two people with conventional rights, Beatriz and her daughter”, she judged, thus believing that Beatriz’s fetus also had a right to life.
El Salvador has formally banned abortion since 1998 under penalty of imprisonment of up to 8 years. Courts across the country often prosecute women who have abortions for aggravated homicide, handing them sentences of up to 50 years in prison.
Beatriz, who died in a road accident in 2017, suffered from an autoimmune disease when she became pregnant for the second time in 2013, at the age of 20, after a complicated first delivery.
The fetus was found to be non-viable due to a serious birth defect and the young woman had been told that she risked death if she carried the pregnancy to term.
She then turned to the courts to be authorized to have an abortion, but her request was rejected by the Constitutional Court. She went into premature labor, underwent a Caesarean section, and the fetus died five hours after delivery.
The Inter-American Court is expected to render its judgment in about six months.
03/23/2023 22:29:17 – San José (AFP) – © 2023 AFP