When Abortion Is Illegal, As National Policy...

[WillyT]

<snip>

It was a sunny midafternoon in a shiny new global-economy mall in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, and a young woman I was hoping to meet appeared to be getting cold feet. She had agreed to rendezvous with a go-between not far from the Payless shoe store and then come to a nearby hotel to talk to me. She was an hour late. Alone in the hotel lobby, I was feeling nervous; I was stood up the day before by another woman in a similar situation. I had been warned that interviewing anyone who had had an abortion in El Salvador would be difficult. The problem was not simply that in this very Catholic country a shy 24-year-old unmarried woman might feel shame telling her story to an older man. There was also the criminal stigma. And this was why I had come to El Salvador: Abortion is a serious felony here for everyone involved, including the woman who has the abortion. Some young women are now serving prison sentences, a few as long as 30 years.

More than a dozen countries have liberalized their abortion laws in recent years, including South Africa, Switzerland, Cambodia and Chad. In a handful of others, including Russia and the United States (or parts of it), the movement has been toward criminalizing more and different types of abortions. In South Dakota, the governor recently signed the most restrictive abortion bill since the Supreme Court ruled in 1973, in Roe v. Wade, that state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional. The South Dakota law, which its backers acknowledge is designed to test Roe v. Wade in the courts, forbids abortion, including those cases in which the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Only if an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother is the procedure permitted. A similar though less restrictive bill is now making its way through the Mississippi Legislature.

In this new movement toward criminalization, El Salvador is in the vanguard. The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries where abortion is circumscribed — rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of the mother — don't apply in El Salvador. They were rejected in the late 1990's, in a period after the country's long civil war ended. The country's penal system was revamped and its constitution was amended. Abortion is now absolutely forbidden in every possible circumstance. No exceptions.

There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal. Like the woman I was waiting to meet.

<snip>

Much More (Horrifyingly More): http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine/09abortion.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

As in...

<snip>

The legislative battle and its outcome did not escape the attention of leaders of anti-abortion groups in the United States. Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, the head of Human Life International, based in Virginia, is intimately familiar with the campaign in El Salvador and says that there are lessons for Americans to learn from it. For one thing, as Euteneuer sees it, the Salvadoran experience shows that all moves to expand abortion rights are pushed through by "elite" institutions of government (the U.S. Supreme Court, for example); by contrast, Euteneuer contends, when the laws are tightened, a grass-roots campaign is inevitably responsible. "El Salvador is an inspiration," he told me recently, an important victory in what he called "the counterrevolution of conscience."

<snip>

Be careful of what you want, you may get it.

FUCK!!!

:nuke:

[WillyT]

1. If You Haven't Read This, You Should !!!

:evilfrown:

[MissB]

2. Don't be discouraged by the lack of responses.

There was a huge thread on this article last week - Wednesday or Thursday - after one of the liberal radio show hosts had a talk with the author of the article.

I sat down on Sunday to read the entire article - it was horrifying. I guess the one thing you could say is that El Salvador has taken the "abortion is murder" rhetoric to its logical conclusion.

[EFerrari]

3. I didn't know this about El Salvador. This is horrendous.

The up side is that there is a nice, big, fat socialist wave sweeping over Latin America. It can't be soon enough.

And, I wonder if abortion in El Salvador is like pot here -- illegal to keep the price up?

[MissB]

5. Not unless you consider a 30 year sentence to be

a good price.

The New York Times article was quite horrifying. 24 year old single mother of three sentenced to 30 years. Forensic vagina specialists. Search warrants for vaginas.

[EFerrari]

6. Jesus. I'm just speechless. n/t

[Nobody]

11. 30 years so she can't reoffend

If I do the math, a woman who is 24 years old at the time if conviction serves 30 years. She's 54 and going through menopause by that time.

The Talibornagain rabid anti-woman fundamentalism is making me look forward to menopause.

[REP]

9. What Price?

From the article:

""I keep two telephones in my purse," I was told in San Salvador by one woman who wished not to be identified because her work is illegal. I'd heard of her through an abortion rights advocate, and I asked to meet her in person. "One phone is for work and personal matters," she went on to explain in fluent English. "The second one is for the other thing." Although she doesn't work directly in women's health care, her job keeps her traveling and in contact with people working for health groups and women's rights groups who do outreach throughout the country. "I would estimate that there are about 20 people who are working in different and specific places who have this phone number," she said. They pass it along when they think it is necessary.

And so when the phone rings, she has to decide whether the woman seeking an abortion is legitimate or not. On occasion, she has turned off the phone after a suspicious call. "You need to be careful, especially when the people who call are young people," she said. "One day they think one thing and the next day another thing. And they know your information." Her practice is first to find out the crucial facts of the pregnancy; then, if she decides she's willing to help, she calls a doctor she knows who lives in a neighboring country.

"When I'm calling the doctor, I never say on this telephone, 'Someone needs an abortion,"' she told me. "Rather, I might say, 'We have a situation here.' When we talk about the details, like how many weeks along she is, the doctor might ask me, 'What time is it?' I might say it's 8 o'clock, meaning the patient is eight weeks along." After all the details are worked out in code, the doctor flies in. The abortion — usually nonsurgical — is performed without charge.

...

A doctor who works this underground circuit also agreed to meet me and discuss abortion. She seemed terrified the entire time we spoke. She constantly glanced around the cafe where we had coffee with an interpreter. She ended every paragraph with a plea not to reveal any details that might identify her. But she said she wanted to explain how abortions are done in El Salvador. Most women with some education or access to the Internet quickly learn about misoprostol, she said. It is an ulcer drug that, when inserted in the vagina, can provoke contractions and cause bleeding that looks, in an emergency room, just like a miscarriage."

Doesn't sound as though these women are making money.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

13. I wonder if the other way around is common too.

El Salvador is quite a small country. Shouldn't be that difficult for a sizeable amount of women in need to have a bus trip.

Unless they have pregnancy checks at the border or something.

[noiretextatique]

4. insanity

:nuke:

[EFerrari]

7. This hits very close to home, my family is from El Salvador.

My uncle earned his US citizenship, worked like a Trojan and then went back there in his retirement.

I went there for a couple of months when I was a teen. There was poverty there that I'd never ever ever imagined was possible.

The culture there is what BushCo is trying to build here, the haves, the have mores and their servants.

The current ruling class is in bed with our Cabal.

This is what they'd like to do here. What they will do here if we let them. And my heart hurts for my hermanas that are being abused in this way.

:nuke:

[NMMNG]

8. Unf*ckingbelievable

:grr: A policy that criminalizes all abortions has a flip side. It appears to mandate that the full force of the medical team must tend toward saving the fetus under any circumstances. This notion can lead to some dangerous practices. Consider an ectopic pregnancy, a condition that occurs when a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube — which is no bigger around than a pencil — and gets stuck there (or sometimes in the abdomen). Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.

According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube. "That is our policy," Valdés told me. She was plainly in torment about the subject. "That is the law," she said. "The D.A.'s office told us that this was the law." Valdés estimated that her hospital treated more than a hundred ectopic pregnancies each year. She described the hospital's practice. "Once we determine that they have an ectopic pregnancy, we make sure they stay in the hospital," she said. The women are sent to the dispensary, where they receive a daily ultrasound to check the fetus. "If it's dead, we can operate," she said. "Before that, we can't." If there is a persistent fetal heartbeat, then they have to wait for the fallopian tube to rupture. If they are able to persuade the patient to stay, though, doctors can operate the minute any signs of early rupturing are detected. Even a few drops of blood seeping from a fallopian tube will "irritate the abdominal wall and cause pain," Valdés explained. By operating at the earliest signs of a potential rupture, she said, her doctors are able to minimize the risk to the woman.


The fetus is not going to live no matter what, yet they can't do anything until a rupture because of the asinine laws. Torture the woman and risk her life all for the sake of laws. :grr:

[cali]

10. Frightening, horrible, but

it's not going to happen here. The right to lifers have overplayed their hand. What's more, it's the movement is seriously split. The real danger to abortion is right in front of our noses. If the so-called federal PBA ban is upheld, we'll see a wave of new abortion regulations much like those that followed in the wake of Casey in the early 90s. Roe is already well on the way to becoming a right in name only. By the time they're through with it, it'll be virtually meaningless for poor and young women.

[WillyT]

12. Kick !!!

:kick: