The Supreme Court of El Salvador has ruled that a women with lupus and kidney failure may not abort a fetus with anacephaly [warning: wikipedia link, but gross images]. Anacephaly means the fetus has no brain and is almost certain to die.
So a (literally) brainless fetus has more rights than a sick woman, in El Salvador, today. I’m sure I demonstrate my unsuitability for shield law protection by noting that the core of today’s Republican Party wishes that our Supreme Court were as forward-looking as El Salvador’s.
BGinCHI
Women as delivery systems for infants they have to take care of, regardless of consequences.
I smell the Catholic Church.
Linda Featheringill
Mama’s body may not be able to support a pregnancy. She probably would have survived a termination. Whether she survives a pregnancy is another question.
c u n d gulag
Conservative POV:
“Forced Labor” for all pregnant women!
the Conster
As a thought experiment imagine a man being forced to have his body hooked up to another person to keep them alive. They’d have no problem passing and enforcing those laws, amirite?
Elizabelle
I hope the mom has a passport and can airlifted out for a safe, legal — and in this case, therapeutic — abortion.
JCT
@the Conster: Ah yes, “forced parabiosis” – sounds like fun.
Meanwhile, that waste of protoplasm, Gohmert, agrees with the decision in this case 100%. Recently argued that a woman should be forced to carry an anencephalic fetus to term. Just like his mom did with him.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
This is the most infuriating part of the rigid pro-life mantras you see many in the GOP echo. The idea that pregnancy immediately robs the mother of nearly all their rights as a human being and citizen and replaces them with the rights of the unborn, which trumps the mother’s very life. This ruling is the very kind of thing pro-lifers in America seem to want to see stateside so desperately, though only a few wear that admiration so openly.
EDIT: Not to mention the the patent absurdity of ‘pro-life’ supporters demanding that, in cases like these, the mother suffer almost certain death for a fetus that might not (or in this exact case, WILL NOT) survive on its own. I mean…you could save one life, which could go on to bear again in the future, or allow two lives to be snuffed out for your ‘moral consistency’. Bleh….
MeDrewNotYou
I started writing a whole rant, but the power flickered. Damn.
The point is, these things without any real brain aren’t any more of a person than my kidney is. And at least my kidney sustains (occasionally) higher thought. Whatever else ‘life begins at conception’ is supposed to mean, it should mean a person’s life begins.
ETA- That sounds a little callous. Better to say they’re an assemblage of human parts in a mostly human form, but they lack the crucial ‘spark.’ If a soul resides anywhere, it has to be in the brain; even with all their inconsistencies, I don’t see how forced-birth folk could argue otherwise.
Emma
At this moment I am so angry that I can’t even consider a response because it would all be blocked by the obscenity police.
cathyx
So do they not also have access to birth control? This woman has lupus, cardiovascular disease, and kidney failure. She should not be getting pregnant.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@MeDrewNotYou:
Sadly, for these kinds of pro-lifers, the mother’s life ends at conception and begins anew at birth (if she lives that long).
MomSense
@Emma:
&*&*%$%^^%^&*^&*()*(_+(!!!!! )_+*)(*)&*&&^%^$$%^*()_(_++_*&(&*^%#++)*()*(&&*^%%$!!!
I know you know what I am saying!
askew
That’s what happens when a backwards, women-hating, church controls so much of the country. The Catholic Church has incredible control of Latin America unfortunately.
Emma
@cathyx: In your world there have never been accidents? But actually it’s possible that she didn’t. Heavily Catholic country, extremely conservative.
Elizabelle
From an earlier Guardian story:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/11/abortion-plight-grips-el-salvador?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487
Beatriz has a one-year old baby boy.
The pro-life religio-political complex in El Salvador prefers to endanger his mother’s life — possibly take away his mother — so that his doomed and brain-damaged sibling in utero gets every consideration.
The Moar You Know
It’s El Salvador. The country that gave us death squads and MS-13. I expect no less from that benighted shithole of a country; I’m kind of surprised that they don’t make the mother give birth in public to prove her love for Anacephalic Jesus.
Constance
Hmmm. Perhaps the supreme court in El Salvador has decided that if the child is born and can be baptized, it can go to heaven. But if the brainless fetus is a person at conception, the priest should be able to baptize the aborted fetus. If the mother dies before delivering her brainless child, will they be able to baptize it in her dead womb? These people are creeps. Sure makes me want to stop being an atheist.
BGinCHI
Did Morning Joe have Michelle Bachmann on to talk about this?
Cassidy
Imagine if this was an Islamic country coming with a high court ruling of forced births. The chicken little party would be clamoring for a war over women’s rights.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@BGinCHI:
I’m sure the unimpeachable Todd Akin will be on to explain both why we are not like El Salvador while extolling the moral consistency of the ruling and how we should emulating it.
Higgs Boson's Mate
I hear that John McCain is already on his way to El Salvador to meet with the fetus. McCain’s office released a brief statement left by McCain:
“I am going to meet with this fetal person because we have much in common. We are all fetuses now.”
Bill D.
@cathyx: We don’t know why she is pregnant. Birth control failure is a very common cause of unwanted pregnancy in the U.S., certainly, and I would expect that to be true elsewhere. There is always the possibility of rape having occurred, something that may not always be mentioned publicly for a variety of reasons. Best to *not* assume a lack of responsible behavior given the fragmentary information we have.
Elizabelle
Beatriz has a year-old baby,and is about six months pregnant. She may not have expected to conceive again so quickly.
Beatriz is 22. She has a toddler son.
Three young lives involved, and the doomed fetus’s trumps all.
Because the pro-life cabal is determined this case won’t be the camel’s nose under the tent.
And that they get to make the decision for Beatriz and her family.
MeDrewNotYou
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Before I was baffled more than angry. It makes no sense even by their own arguments about life!
But then I remembered, it isn’t about the bullshit they say, it is always, 100% of the time, about controlling women and their bodies. Pregnancy is just a really damn convenient way to do that.
Chris
@askew:
One of my friends in college was a Latin American studies major, and she looked into how and why the Catholic Church’s power and influence varied from country to country. Her conclusion? It depended on the Church’s relationship with the old military regime. Those countries where clerics had opposed the old regime respected the Church a lot more than those where they’d crawled into bed together.
Since El Salvador was Oscar Romero’s country, this would be a case in point. (The opposite would be Argentina, where the Church had a nice and cozy relationship with the junta, and the country now has gay marriage).
aimai
@Elizabelle: They used to try to stop Irish women at the border to prevent just this. People often can’t travel in the late stage of a pregnancy and are refused permission to board planes. I wouldn’t bet on anyone being able to get out of the country when they need it. Especially given how motivated the authorities are to stop them.
Mnemosyne
@cathyx:
She may have decided it was worth the risk to have a second child, but now it turns out that that second child has a fatal birth defect. Is she supposed to die because she didn’t know that the fetus was not going to develop correctly?
aimai
@cathyx: What an indescribably obscene thing to say. Really. My hat’s off to you for the most disgusting way of approaching this situation. You may be blissfully unaware that women don’t control their own fertility in most parts of the world–they aren’t entitled to refuse sex with their husbands, they are not entitled to refuse unprotected sex with their husbands/boyfriends, they are not able to access reliable birth control, they have birth control failures, they have bad information from their doctors, and they don’t necessarily anticipate their own health risks–lots of things get worse during pregnancy, somethings get better and women are often told that a pregnancy might cure or alleviate some symptoms. You not only have no way of knowing why this woman ended up pregnant everything you should know as an aware and educated human being out to militate against jumping to such a stupid conclusion.
cat48
An Indian woman was refused an abortion in Ireland and died. She was already miscarrying, but the Dr. could still hear a fetal heart beat and refused to do a D & C.
It happen 11/2012 & she died at 31 as her husband watched. Very disturbing! Catholics need to do better than this! I don’t usually knock anyone’s religion as I’m not a true believer of anything. This haunted me for days.
http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/indian-woman-dies-after-being-refused-abortion-in-ireland_811000.html
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Emma: And what if she didn’t find out about the other conditions until after she was pregnant?
Roger Moore
@cathyx:
That’s against Catholic doctrine, too.
Eric
GWOW goes on unabated
Emma
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): When I answered I didn’t go into all the possibilities, Aimai and others have done so.
cathyx
@Bill D.: And I think it would be ‘best’ that you don’t read into my comment more than I said. I never said it was her lack of responsible behavior that got her pregnant. I said she should not be getting pregnant. I didn’t say she should not decide to get pregnant.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
It’s possible that Beatriz made a choice to risk her life and health for a healthy child, but that she didn’t expect to have the fetus end up with a fatal birth defect. It’s one thing to have the comforting thought that at least your child will survive and outlive you even if things go wrong for you. It’s a very different thing to find out that you risked your life and health for nothing.
the Conster
Women need to adopt the Lysistrata strategy to fight the War on Women. It’s the only way.
Trakker
The courts decide what the law allows, not what’s moral. This isn’t about the court ruling, it’s about idiot religious doctrines and the stupid, mindless politicians who embrace them without question.
Mnemosyne
@cathyx:
So outside people like yourself should be allowed to make the decision for her? How does this make you any different than the judges?
beltane
@Mnemosyne: And whatever the circumstances were regarding the pregnancy, the idea that Beatriz deserves a death sentence for them is repulsive.
dedc79
I just don’t get it. These same kinds of religious nuts who wanted to keep a brain dead terry schiavo on life support for another 50 years have no problem killing a living/breathing/thinking woman to deliver a dead baby.
maurinsky
@the Conster:
Conster, I have often suggested, as a modest proposal, that we just remove the testicles of unmarried men so they are unable to assist in creating a pregnancy in a woman. Much less invasive than abortion!
JCT
@Mnemosyne: This is assuming that she has received extensive counseling regarding her risks in pregnancy. Big assumption. Having done my share of guiding women with cardiomyopathies through pregnancy, this is a very complex management issue.
Given the fact that she had already survived one pregnancy – she may have assumed that she was not at high risk.
These can be tough calls even in optimally managed patients.
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
It’s almost as if their claim to respect life is total bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@beltane:
Exactly. I know that forced birthers love to pretend otherwise, but the vast majority of late-term abortions happen not because the woman frivolously changed her mind, but because something has gone horribly wrong with the pregnancy and either the mother or the baby (or both) will not survive to full term. Telling that woman, “Too bad, you should have realized that your fetus might end up with a random fatal birth defect before you got pregnant, now suck it up,” is a horribly, horrible cruel thing to do.
Mnemosyne
@JCT:
I’m not sure that really matters all that much since you have the anacephaly, which seems to mostly happen due to random chance. Do you think her reported conditions could have put her at higher risk for having an anacephaletic fetus? There doesn’t seem to be any indication whether Beatriz had kidney failure prior to her pregnancy or whether that was something that developed as a complication.
Shakezula
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.”
-Gen 3:16.
Because their psychotic sky commander loves to hear the bitches cry.
rk
@cathyx:
What a fucking moron you are! Do you have any idea how women live in other parts of the world. A majority of women world wide do not have control over their bodies, They have sex whenever the husband wants.Do you know if she used contraception or not? Do you know that with her health issues whether using contraception was even safe for her? In fact, do you know anything other than writing about what she should or should not have done. The issue is not about her responsibility for getting pregnant. It’s about a bunch of child raping assholes deciding that it is better for a woman to be dead rather than have an abortion. The same jackasses will deny her contraception as well (or are you not aware that the catholic church fights against access to contraception tooth and nail). If there was karma in this world people such as yourself would be reborn as a woman in a slum in a third world hellhole..
JCT
Very hard to know whether the anacephaly was a result of her underlying condition(s). Other types of fetal cardiac defects have been linked to SLE and managing pregnancies in patients with active SLE + cardiac/renal disease is a high-wire act. No way to know how she was doing after the delivery of her first child, but if she has a cardiomyopathy she should have been advised to wait for awhile before getting pregnant again, period.
Regardless, her medical conditions should drive her care. While it is profoundly cruel for any woman to have to carry a non-viable fetus to term, this is obviously a level beyond.
cathyx
@rk: Your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired. I said she should not be getting pregnant. That’s all I said. Do you think she should have? I never said she had any control over the fact that she got pregnant. We don’t know if she did or not. Then I asked if women had access to birth control in that country. I also never said that the chain of events that then happened was deserved or fair. I said she should not be getting pregnant. That is a true statement.
Mnemosyne
@JCT:
Thanks! As I am not a doctor (or a medical professional of any kind), I couldn’t tell from the Wikipedia article if someone with her conditions was at higher risk of having a fetus with anacephaly.
Mnemosyne
@cathyx:
Anacephaly seems to be a mostly random occurrence. Should all women refrain from getting pregnant just in case their fetus has anacephaly? If not, then your “she should not be getting pregnant” stance makes no sense, because it’s not only her health problems that led to this court case, it’s the fact that the fetus she’s risking her life for has no chance of survival outside the womb.
That’s what makes this case so particularly cruel. There is an absolute certainty that at least one of them is going to die. Now the court has decided that they both have to die because Beatriz was unlucky enough to have a fetus with anacephaly. And your only answer is, “She should not be getting pregnant”?
cathyx
@Mnemosyne: I didn’t say she should not be getting pregnant because of the anacephaly baby. I said it because of the Lupus, cardiovascular disease, and the kidney failure. If she were my daughter, I would counsel her to not attempt another pregnancy. Her health is precarious and she has another child who would love to have his mother live to see him grow up.
Emma
@Shakezula: Actually, no. The current insanity is of fairly recent origin and has nothing to do with that particular quote. Jewish law certainly places a higher value on the woman over the fetus. And twenty years ago, or even ten, there were Catholic doctors and nurses who quietly would refer a woman in this situation to another doctor, both for birth control and abortions, or deal with it themselves in necessary.
Yatsuno
@cathyx: One question: Who the hell are you to be making that decision for her?
Epicurus
@cathyx: 1) She is NOT your daughter; 2) whether or not she “should” be pregnant is rather irrelevant at this point. Let’s stop discussing hypotheticals, and instead, deal with the reality of a woman whose life is in danger, and the continuing interference of the courts and (no doubt) the Catholic Church in affairs which in a just world, would be between the woman and her physician. End. Of. Story.
El Cid
Remember, the fetus is a treasured and uncorrupted soul until such time as it is born.
Once it emerges from the breeding container (i.e., the ‘mother’), it is exposed to the sinfulness of the world and then may be allowed to suffer and die.
But while in the womb, the fetus is our best example of the pure and angelic soul, and must be guarded against any threat — including from any actions by the gestation device (i.e., the ‘mother’) — so that we may attain proximity to the godly souls among us while they are still unstained by human sinfulness.
Shakezula
@Emma: Are you saying that misogyny was less evident in some places at one time? Or that the anti-abortion movement isn’t driven by some jacked up interpretation of the Bible which says women are bad and must be punished for the sin of being women?
(Personally, I think that story was constructed in part when some sexist decided to mansplain labor pains, but what do I know?)
aimai
@cathyx: Renal failure is a complication of pregnancy–it probably didn’t predate it. Lecturing this woman on what she should have done, given (as we’ve all pointed out to you) that she probably didn’t have any control over the pregnancy in the first place is just such a stupid, meaningless, bitchy thing to say that I really just stand in awe of the kind of person who would say it.
MeDrewNotYou
@El Cid: I think that that’s what some small number believe, but I honestly don’t think that’s the real reason the majority oppose abortion. Not to toot my own horn (something else fundies probably don’t like) I think I nailed it earlier, with a bit of stimulation from other folk around here – control. Your explanation isn’t bad, though, and I’m not totally wedded to my idea. But I think the idea of control better accounts for the opposition to birth control, even forms that don’t potentially disrupt things after fertilization.
As an open question afterthought, I thought original sin attached at the beginning of life in Catholic theology, in this case at fertilization. Doesn’t that mean that aborted or not the fetus is Catholicly screwed? Catholic and Protestant fundies tend to play up the innocence/purity angle, though, so I don’t really know. Assume for simplicity’s sake that they’re completely honest about their concern in the manner El Cid described. It’d be something fun to trip them up with since regardless of which one of us is right about their ultimate motives.
ETA-Tiny bit of clarification
rb
@cathyx: I said she should not be getting pregnant. I didn’t say she should not decide to get pregnant.
Not sure I follow you. Seems like you’re splitting the most absurd of hairs. You’re saying: in your view, it’d be OK for her to “decide to get pregnant,” but beyond the pale to “get pregnant”? Even wingnutese isn’t this difficult to parse.
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster:
Only if they don’t allow their sons to be altar boys will it impact the Catholic hierarchy.
Mnemosyne
@cathyx:
If not for the anacephaly, there probably would be other options (such as inducing labor early) that might help both mother and baby survive. Because of the anacephaly, there is no option other than abortion. So to try and take the anacephaly out of the equation is to make the equation collapse.
Again, there’s a good chance that she decided to take the risk in the hope of having a healthy baby, but has now run into an unexpected and rare complication that means the certain death of the fetus. How, exactly, was she supposed to magically foresee that?
Mnemosyne
@Shakezula:
She’s saying that the fundamentalist Christian opposition to abortion is a very recent development — as late as the mid-1980s, a lot of fundamentalist Christians were of the opinion that abortion was fine. It wasn’t until they figured out that they could gain more power by allying themselves with conservative Catholics that they suddenly and magically changed their mind. As Fred Clark says in that link, “eternal” fundamentalist Christian opposition to abortion is younger than the McDonald’s Happy Meal.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne:
Jimmy Carter’s initiatives to remove the tax exempt status of “Christian Academies” set up in reaction to desegregation in the South had a lot to do with the rise of the Religious Right.
Applying actual teachings of Jesus to these guys makes them angry.
JCT
@aimai: Just for the record, renal complications in active SLE are very common and can be devastating. Her renal disease likely predated her first pregnancy. Her current pregnancy is likely exacerbating her underlying end organ disease, but it is unlikely to have caused it.
MeDrewNotYou
@Mnemosyne: Its a really weird thing for me, seeing the speed at which they evolved. I have a freak show like interest in right-wing Christianity due to my parents*, so I read/collect religious books and tracts. I have a book published the year I was born, 1983, by a Southern Baptist that in a lot of ways would be unthinkable today. (Boxed, unfortunately, or I could give the author/title, but I vaguely recall it being mentioned recently on the blogs I read, most of which are on BJ’s blogroll.) It really is bizarre reading what is basically the pro-choice position on abortion, namely it isn’t a decision to be made lightly but its the woman’s to make, coming from someone who today is probably a member of Operation Rescue. By the time I was growing up, say age 6 or 7, I heard about the evils of abortion from religious relatives as if they were handed down on Mt Sinai to Moses. I certainly heard a lot more about abortion than the Sermon on the Mount.
*-Dad never felt welcome at Mom’s Pentecostal church which she stopped going to since she was too busy working. She’s now a generic nondenominational Christian that doesn’t attend church with pretty libertarian social views mostly due to me and my sister. She’s come so far! Representative lines: “I wouldn’t have an abortion, but its none of my business if someone else does.”
Shakezula
@Mnemosyne: I was being an angry femiNazi, but I was thinking of the RCC since we’re talking about a country with a high RCC infestation – sorry presence.
However, was there a point when the Evans were less misogynistic? From what I know, we’re dealing with a people who believe [parts of] the Bible are The Truth, and the story starts out “God made everything and it was perfect. And then this woman ruined everything.” Doesn’t make for a very wymyn friendly environment, I think.
Emma
@Shakezula: This is late and you probably won’t read it but no, I wasn’t saying that. I am saying that the madness in the Catholic Church has grown exponentially as they have lost secular power. I am personally aware through family history of at least two abortions that were quietly overlooked by the Church — and this was Cuba in the 50s. It wasn’t policy but it was done because a mother with several children to care for was considered important if only for child-rearing. And doctors performed them because health issues were between them and their patient.
karen
@the Conster:
Then rape would become legal.
LongHairedWeirdo
*GAH*.
PREGNANCIES ARE ABORTED, NOT FETUSES.
So, for example, the notion that certain methods of birth control can “induce abortion” are complete bullshit, because *there is no pregnancy to abort*.
Stop buying into the anti-choice decision to equate “abort” with “kill”. This woman is unable to abort – that is, end – her pregnancy legally, putting her life in pointless danger.