Please Help to Save Beatriz’s Life – Sign on to the Amnesty International Letter

Amnesty International is asking people to sign on to a letter supporting Beatriz – a 22 year-old Salvadoran women who is 4 ½ months pregnant. Her doctors have diagnosed her with kidney disease and Lupis, and said the fetus doesn’t have a large part of its brain. Beatriz’s life is at risk if she does not terminate her pregnancy. The hospital treating Beatriz has asked the Ministry of Health for permission to provide Beatriz an abortion, but officials have ignored their request.

El Salvador has a constitutional ban against abortion, which has resulted in several serious issues for poor women throughout the country. There are too many cases in which doctors and police have accused Salvadoran women of trying to terminate their pregnancies when they were really having a miscarriage. There are many other cases in which women have died trying to terminate pregnancies that they didn’t want, either because they were raped or their impoverished situation made it impossible for them to care for another life.

To be clear – this is an issue that affects poor women. Salvadorans who need to terminate a pregnancy and have money can go to private doctors and have an abortion without the risk of being arrested. They also have access to information and contraception that is not readily available in public schools or health clinics.

Poor women who can’t pay for a private doctor and have to rely on state facilities do not have any options available to them, other than trying to terminate their pregnancy at home. On March 16, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held a hearing on the impacts of the strict abortion laws in El Salvador.

Unfortunately, abortions are sometimes necessary to save the life of the mother, as it the case with Beatriz.

Please help Beatriz by sending the letter to the Ministry of Health – here is a link to the Amnesty Letter. The letter and instructions are in Spanish – if you fill out the fields under the email, Amnesty will send you an email with the letter and email addresses. All you have to do is reply to the letter (make sure to delete the instructions, leaving the letter in the body of the email). If the email addresses don’t automatically fill in, you can cut and past them.

Thank you!