What’s at Stake in the Abortion Case Before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights?
Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2025 5:07 am
El Salvador’s punitive treatment of women through its absolute criminalization of abortion will come under scrutiny by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the “Court”) on March 22-23, in a case involving the state’s treatment of a woman in need of a life-saving abortion. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután, who, after experiencing a pregnancy fraught with complications due to an autoimmune disease, found herself pregnant a second time. Despite medical consensus of the lack of viability of the anencephalic fetus and the harm to Beatriz if the pregnancy continued, Beatriz was forced to wait in physical and mental anguish for months while the hospital decided whether to let her doctors perform a therapeutic abortion, separated from her family and young son while in fear of dying or suffering irreparable health damage.
This case follows the Court’s 2021 judgment in Manuela v. El Salvador, which documented the negative consequences of the abortion ban on impoverished women and girls. However, in Manuela the Court missed the opportunity to directly address the multiple rights violations stemming from this ban.
The Court now has a chance to frame the Beatriz case squarely 99 acres database around the effects of El Salvador’s draconian abortion restrictions on women, providers, and on the health system itself, in light of its human rights obligations under the American Convention, the Protocol of San Salvador, the Convention of Belém do Pará, and the Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.
The State of El Salvador argued before the Inter-American Commission that Beatriz ended up delivering the child by c-section and was not criminally prosecuted, and that therefore this is not a case about the abortion ban. Such a formalistic interpretation of the dispute here ignores that the abortion restrictions shaped the context of everything that happened to Beatriz: the delay in receiving medically appropriate care for her deteriorating health; the interference with her personal integrity and family life; the physical risks and mental anguish she suffered when forced to carry an anencephalic fetus; and the chilling of providers’ behavior.
The Court has an opportunity to extend its jurisprudence on health rights, gender equality and intersectional discrimination, and freedom from violence if it eschews the cramped interpretation of rights that the state of El Salvador is proposing, in favor of a holistic assessment of the effective enjoyment of rights in accordance with the pro homine principle as it has in many other cases, including with respect to pregnant women in the 2022 case of Britez Arce v Argentina.
This case follows the Court’s 2021 judgment in Manuela v. El Salvador, which documented the negative consequences of the abortion ban on impoverished women and girls. However, in Manuela the Court missed the opportunity to directly address the multiple rights violations stemming from this ban.
The Court now has a chance to frame the Beatriz case squarely 99 acres database around the effects of El Salvador’s draconian abortion restrictions on women, providers, and on the health system itself, in light of its human rights obligations under the American Convention, the Protocol of San Salvador, the Convention of Belém do Pará, and the Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture.
The State of El Salvador argued before the Inter-American Commission that Beatriz ended up delivering the child by c-section and was not criminally prosecuted, and that therefore this is not a case about the abortion ban. Such a formalistic interpretation of the dispute here ignores that the abortion restrictions shaped the context of everything that happened to Beatriz: the delay in receiving medically appropriate care for her deteriorating health; the interference with her personal integrity and family life; the physical risks and mental anguish she suffered when forced to carry an anencephalic fetus; and the chilling of providers’ behavior.
The Court has an opportunity to extend its jurisprudence on health rights, gender equality and intersectional discrimination, and freedom from violence if it eschews the cramped interpretation of rights that the state of El Salvador is proposing, in favor of a holistic assessment of the effective enjoyment of rights in accordance with the pro homine principle as it has in many other cases, including with respect to pregnant women in the 2022 case of Britez Arce v Argentina.