Baby born to Salvadoran woman denied abortion dies
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador The baby born to a Salvadoran woman who had been denied an abortion has died.
The girl had been born without a brain and Health Minister Maria Isabel Rodriguez says she died five hours after Monday's C-section.
Officials refer to the 22-year-old mother only as Beatriz for privacy reasons.
The country's Supreme Court prohibited an abortion for Beatriz, who suffers from lupus and kidney failure and whose lawyers said the pregnancy was threatening her life.
"We cannot appeal the case because this was the last step, the Supreme Court," said Victor Hugo Mata, Beatriz's lawyer, in a telephone interview with CBSNews.com, after the decision was taken last week.
Her plight drew international attention and a ruling from the Inter-American Court on Human Rights that El Salvador should protect her life and help her end the pregnancy.
Three separate sonograms carried out by the National Maternity Hospital, where Beatriz is being treated in the country's capital, have shown that she is pregnant with an anencephalic fetus.
"It isn't just an abortion, it is a necessity," said Mata.
The Health Ministry stepped in late last week after the ruling and said it would allow the C-section because the pregnancy was already at 26 weeks and the country's strict abortion laws were no longer at play. Ultrasound images had indicated her fetus was developing with only a brain stem.
The Health Ministry can determine what is most medically sound for a mother versus the unborn baby and was lauded internationally for working to save the woman's life.
Doctors at the Maternity Hospital had been preparing to perform the C-section at the slightest danger signs to save Beatriz's life, said Maria Isabel Rodriguez of the health ministry.
The woman was recovering under the close watch of doctors late Monday.
El Salvador's laws prohibit all abortions, even when a woman's health is at risk. Beatriz and any doctor who terminated her pregnancy would have faced arrest and criminal charges.
A majority of judges on the high court rejected the appeal by Beatriz's lawyers, saying physical and psychological exams by the government-run Institute of Legal Medicine found that her diseases were under control and that she could continue the pregnancy.
Abortion opponents said the case was being used to press for legalized abortion in El Salvador, which has some of the toughest abortion laws in Latin America, along with Chile, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Suriname.