What Does El Salvador And The GOP Have In Common?
Posted by Michelle Moquin on June 1st, 2013
Good morning!
The answer: They both want to control womens’ bodies.
Another example of how sick men can be.
Another good write from ThinkProgress. It seems their writes have been at the top of my radar lately, and rightly so. They are worthy of blog space.
Salvadoran Woman Has Been Denied A Life-Saving Abortion Even Though Her Fetus Is Missing Its Brain
El Salvador’s Supreme Court has decided to deny a 22-year-old woman a lifesaving abortion, ruling against making a medical exception to the conservative nation’s stringent abortion ban. Without an abortion, the woman will likely die — along with her nonviable fetus, which is missing its brain.
Identified in the press only as “Beatriz,” the young Salvadoran woman suffers from a chronic health condition that worsens when she is pregnant, and her doctors have warned that she is at “high risk of death” if she continues to carry her fetus. Several ultrasounds have revealed that, even if Beatriz does survive to carry the fetus to full term, it has virtually no chance of survival because it has no brain.
Beatriz has been fighting for an abortion for the past three months, and several international human rights organizations have taken up her case. But it’s been an uphill battle in her deeply Catholic nation, where abortion is illegal under absolutely all circumstances and punishable by up to 30 years in prison. After El Salvador’s attorney general refused to grant Beatriz and her doctors an exception to the harsh law, the pregnant woman turned to the Supreme Court.
And on Wednesday, the highest court in the country denied Beatriz permission to access the medical care that would save her life. El Salvador’s Supreme Court took several weeks to deliberate Beatriz’s case in consultation with the Institute of Legal Medicine, which advises the court on medical issues. The Institute determined that Beatriz’s health “was not yet in absolute danger.”
There are no options left. “We cannot appeal the case because this was the last step, the Supreme Court,” Victor Hugo Mata, the lawyer representing Beatriz, told CBS News.
Beatriz has been hospitalized for the last several months, separated from her husband and 14-month-old son. And even though the country’s Institute of Legal Medicine claims that Beatriz isn’t in critical condition yet, a group of her doctors have warned that her health is deteriorating daily. Earlier this month, Beatriz recorded a personal appeal to her president to intervene and save her life. “President Mauricio Funes Cartagena, help me please,” she begged. “This baby inside me cannot survive. I am ill. I want to live… I want to live for my son.” That help has not come for Beatriz.
“It’s a situation where the risk increases as time goes on — and a lot of the risks could have been avoided if the Salvadoran government had reasonable regulations in place that when the life of the mother is at risk, the health of the mother is threatened, there would be an exception to their outright ban on abortions,” Larry Ladutke, an Amnesty Internationl specialist on El Salvador, explained.
Lilian Sepúlveda, the global legal program director at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s decision to deny Beatriz a life-saving abortion is “an appalling and disgraceful violation of her fundamental human rights” and pointed out that “Salvadoran women have been paying an unacceptably high price for El Salvador’s abortion ban.” Unfortunately, this isn’t unique to Beatriz’s country. Around the world, thousands of women die every year because they lack access to safe reproductive care. Even here in the United States, where women have the right to legal abortion services, anti-choice lawmakers have still successfully imposed barriers to reproductive care — even in similar situations as Beatriz’s, when women are carrying fetuses with no brain function.
UPDATE
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the highest human rights courts in the Americas, has ordered El Salvador to provide Beatriz with the care that will save her life. This is the first case on abortion that the court has ever considered. As RH Reality Check reports, since El Salvador is a member state of the Organization of American States and a signatory of the American Convention on Human Rights, its government is obligated to comply with the Inter-American Court’s order — and has until June 7 to provide a report that proves that it’s doing so.
UPDATE
El Salvador’s Health Minister announced on Thursday that Beatriz will be allowed to end her pregnancy by having a Cesarean section. Because her pregnancy is past 26 weeks, the country’s health officials now have the authority to decide which medical procedures she may receive to safeguard her life. A C-section is not the same thing as an abortion procedure, but it will achieve the same ends. Beatriz’s nonviable fetus is not expected to survive the surgery.
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And then you’ve got women such as Lila Rose, president of the anti-abortion activist group Live Action, who said the case has not convinced her that abortion should be allowed under any circumstances. Gee, thanks Lila for your support. You are certainly a girl’s girl. I wonder if you would say the same same thing if it were your life about to be lost for a baby that is brain dead and won’t survive.
Who else wants to make what’s under my skirt their business? Who else wants to rile me up and try and make decisions over my body, my life? Anybody? Oh yeah, don’t let me forget the good ‘ol GOP - They have their two to throw in. Actually more than two.
Here’s 5 lies the LSOS GOP’s like to tell about women’s bodies.
1.
“As a man, would it interest you to know that Dr. Brownstein just published an article that links the pill to prostate cancer?” state Rep. Jeanine Notter (R) asked a male representative at the hearing, the Merrimack Patch reports.
“In the children that are born from these women?” he asked. Notter could not clearly explain the study or how the pill results in prostate cancer.
The study described in the newsletter of Dr. David Brownstein, a physician and holistic practitioner in Michigan, suggests men may ingest estrogen through environmental contamination, not in utero from mothers taking birth control. An author of the study told ABC News, “This is just a hypothesis-generating idea. Women should not be throwing away the pill because of this.”
Materials that inform the pregnant woman that there is a direct link between abortion and breast cancer. It is scientifically undisputed that full-term pregnancy reduces a woman’s lifetime risk of breast cancer. It is also undisputed that the earlier a woman has a first full-term pregnancy, the lower her risk of breast cancer becomes, because following a full-term pregnancy the breast tissue exposed to estrogen through the menstrual cycle is more mature and cancer resistant. In fact, for each year that a woman’s first full-term pregnancy is delayed, her risk of breast cancer rises 3.5 percent. The theory that there is a direct link between abortion and breast cancer builds upon this undisputed foundation. During the first and second trimesters of pregnancy the breasts develop merely by duplicating immature tissues. Once a woman passes the thirty-second week of pregnancy (third trimester), the immature cells develop into mature cancer resistant cells. When an abortion ends a normal pregnancy, the woman is left with more immature breast tissue than she had before she was pregnant.
There is no link between abortions and breast cancer, according to the World Health Organization, the American Cancer Society and other major health organizations. Similar provisions requiring doctors to make the abortion-breast cancer connection remain on the books in other state laws. Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas all inaccurately assert a risk in written counseling materials, according to theGuttmacher Institute, a New York-based reproductive health research organization.
“It’s not OK because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act.”
Most women who have had sex have used contraception. Birth control pills — which are taken daily, regardless of how frequently a woman has sex — may also be taken to manage endometriosis, ovarian cysts, acne or other health problems. A bill in Arizona proposed penalizing women who use the pill for non-medical reasons.
4.
For too long, Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry have placed selling abortions above the health and safety of women. My message to a constituent last week emphasized my concerns with how abortion providers have not been honest with women about the realities of abortion, and the short and long-term risks of this dangerous surgical procedure.
The notion that Planned Parenthood baits women into unwanted pregnancies by providing ineffective contraception then profits off the abortions is nothing new, but it’s as outrageous as it sounds. Abortions constitute 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services, and the organization estimates it prevents more than 220,000 abortions each year by providing contraception. Because Planned Parenthood isnot allowed to use federal funds for abortions, defunding the program may limit contraception services and result in more abortions.
The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are “one in millions and millions and millions,” said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature’s leading abortion foe.
The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to “secrete a certain secretion” that tends to kill sperm.
Two Philadelphia doctors specializing in human reproduction characterized Freind’s contention as scientifically baseless.
According to Planned Parenthood, about 5 percent of rapes result in pregnancy, and providing all rape victims with emergency contraception could prevent more than 22,000 unwanted pregnancies a year.
Correction: A previous version of this text misstated the status of Idaho’s mandatory ultrasound bill legislation. Lawmakers ultimately decided to table the measure.
Readers: Are 5 lies enough? Nope not for the GOP. Want more? Click here as unfortunately there are more lies to be revealed. It isn’t a pretty picture for us girls. (sigh)
We can talk abortion and go around and around forever saying this and that…and it all comes down to one thing: Catholicism is the reason we women are in the position we are in – it is the bane of all women. And when women can’t or won’t support women in their right to choose, their right to decide what is best for themselves, their bodies and their lives, and they put it into the hands of men…well…what more can I say, it ruins our chances for making progress, being in control, and making our own decisions, etc. for all women. Blog me your thoughts.
Happy Saturday! Thanks for being here with me. Peace out.
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michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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June 1st, 2013 at 11:12 am
UPDATE: On Thursday, Think Progress reported that the country will now allow Beatriz to “end her pregnancy with a Caesarean section.”
A 22-year-old pregnant woman simply known as “Beatriz” will likely die after the El Salvador Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that she could not get an abortion despite the fact that her fetus has virtually no chance of surviving since ultrasounds have revealed it does not have a brain.
Abortion is outlawed under any circumstances in El Salvador. Beatriz, who has a 14-month-old son, suffers from a chronic health condition that worsens during pregnancy. Without the abortion, doctors say she runs a “high risk of death.”
“I don’t want to die,” Beatriz said in a telephone interview with The New York Times. “I want to be with my boy, taking care of him.”
Think Progress:
Beatriz has been fighting for an abortion for the past three months, and several international human rights organizations have taken up her case. But it’s been an uphill battle in her deeply Catholic nation, where abortion is illegal under absolutely all circumstances and punishable by up to 30 years in prison. After El Salvador’s attorney general refused to grant Beatriz and her doctors an exception to the harsh law, the pregnant woman turned to the Supreme Court.
And on Wednesday, the highest court in the country denied Beatriz permission to access the medical care that would save her life. El Salvador’s Supreme Court took several weeks to deliberate Beatriz’s case in consultation with the Institute of Legal Medicine, which advises the court on medical issues. The Institute determined that Beatriz’s health “was not yet in absolute danger.”
There are no options left. “We cannot appeal the case because this was the last step, the Supreme Court,” Victor Hugo Mata, the lawyer representing Beatriz, told CBS News.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:13 am
What a ridiculous and hypocritical decision!! So, her country would prefer the death of mother AND child rather than give the mother permission to abort this non-viable baby. Why is that men (govt) think they have the right to force women to go through with a pregnancy, whether they want to or not.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:15 am
Howie, will you ask the aliens to explain to me again how religion was the great civilizing influence in human history?
The bad caused by organized religion has long outweighed the good.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:16 am
I would not visit El Salvador for any reason short of solving a life-or-death problem. It’s a theocracy, run from Rome. Ugh.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:17 am
This is too much to accept.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:20 am
Yes, because a bunch of legal scholars are certainly more likely to know the medical condition of a woman that a team of DOCTORS.
I need to go look at pictures of gamboling puppies, because I am in serious danger of a Rage Blackout right now.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:30 am
There comes a point where the abortion is riskier than the labor. She passed that point long ago (according to Planned Parenthood, no less).
“I wish I didn’t have that extra beer before getting behind the wheel…..”
This woman is just another poster child for the left and their sick agenda – just as the dead kids at Sandy Hook were a huge help to taking people’s guns away.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:41 am
This is exactly why I have always been and will continue to be PRO CHOICE. Any other stand will cause the needless suffering and death of innocent women and children. I am not saying the abortion should not be regulated, but it MUST be kept LEGAL!
June 1st, 2013 at 11:42 am
Are the members of the Supreme Count males??? That would explain alot.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:43 am
The baby has no brain… Conservatives want to save it so it can vote republican.
June 1st, 2013 at 11:58 am
Chan, I support keeping your legs close as an alternative.
June 1st, 2013 at 12:10 pm
Touch Therapy Relieves PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can develop in anyone who suffers through a disaster…is a victim of violence or a crime…or experiences another traumatic event, such as a heart attack.
Military personnel who are in combat are at particularly high risk for this anxiety disorder. Untreated PTSD can destroy lives, increasing the odds of substance abuse and even suicide—but many sufferers don’t seek treatment due to the stigma attached to mental illlness or concerns about medication side effects.
Good news: A special type of hands-on therapy can ease PTSD symptoms, according to a recent study conducted at Camp Pendleton, a military base in California.
Participants included 123 Marines returning from combat zones who were experiencing one or more of the hallmark symptoms of PTSD (flashbacks, nightmares, racing heart, jumpiness, concentration problems, anger, aggression, isolation, emotional numbness).
At the start of the study, all were tested for symptom severity and rated on a numerical scale, with a score of 50 or higher meriting a PTSD diagnosis. Participants had an average pretreatment score in the mid-50s.
All participants continued to receive whatever standard treatment they were already getting (i.e., psychotherapy and/or medication). About half of the participants also received twice-weekly Healing Touch therapy, a biofield therapy in which trained practitioners use a gentle, noninvasive touch designed to work on the body’s vital energy system to stimulate a healing response.
(The concept of vital energy, often called chi or prana, is well-known in Eastern medical traditions. It is considered a subtle, nonmaterial field that interacts with and influences the functioning of the mind and body. During Healing Touch, practitioners enter a meditative state in which they act as conduits to sense and regulate patients’ vital energy systems to promote mind-body healing.)
In addition to the Healing Touch, this group of participants listened to a guided-imagery CD that used visualization techniques to induce deep relaxation and promote a sense of security.
Results:
After three weeks, everyone was reevaluated. In the control group, the average PTSD score barely changed, dropping from the mid-50s to 52. In the Healing Touch/guided imagery group, however, the average score dropped to 41, which is a very significant improvement—in fact, these Marines no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD.
More research is needed to determine whether Healing Touch therapy with guided imagery works for people whose PTSD stems from non-combat–related trauma (though it makes sense that it might)…how long the benefits last…and the optimal length of treatment.
In the meantime, if you are interested in trying Healing Touch therapy as a complement to conventional PTSD treatment, you can find a trained practitioner through the Web site of the Healing Touch Professional Association or Healing Touch International. Check with your insurance company to see whether the treatment is covered.
Source: Shamini Jain, PhD, senior scientist, Brain, Mind, and Healing division, Samueli Institute, Corona Del Mar, California, and assistant professor of psychiatry, University of California, San Diego. Her study was published in Military Medicine .
June 1st, 2013 at 12:13 pm
There are ways to both save her life and attempt to save the child, neither of which would require abortion. It would instead be a preemptive c-section. Most all late-stage abortions anyways take significantly more time (sometimes days) which is never recommended for emergency care and they also carry the risk of infection or uterine perforation that can go undetected until later.
At 26 weeks, I see no reason why a c-section could not be performed and preemie care given to the baby. But abortion in the commonly accepted sense in this case is…not necessary.
June 1st, 2013 at 12:37 pm
Attempt to save the child? How do you attempt to save the life of a baby with no brain, which is only expected to live for a few hours after birth, assuming it even makes it to full term?
June 1st, 2013 at 12:38 pm
Anencephaly. There isn’t a child there to save, unfortunately. There is a body , an exterior, an empty husk. There is no consciousness, there is no ability to think or make choices, right or wrong.
June 1st, 2013 at 12:44 pm
I just think, if they’re going to condemn a woman to death, they need to make an effort to explain that to the child she’ll leave behind. To his face.
If it’s so right and moral, his grief shouldn’t be difficult to swallow at all.
June 1st, 2013 at 12:46 pm
This is how they justify it (though they do not apply this logic evenly): they say that humans don’t get to decide who lives and who dies.
Flashback to only a year and a half ago when I was trying super-hard to be Catholic and helping out at a confirmation study session: the kids had to fill out a worksheet about who they would throw off a boat at sea if there was only enough water for five people and there were six people in the boat.
Hypothetically, the boat contained an 89-year-old with terminal cancer, a baby with a severe genetic disorder that would kill him within weeks, a white-supremist, a convicted murderer, a rich woman, and one other person, like a rock star or something. The kids all came up with different solutions about who should go over the side.
Of course, after each kid presented his or her idea about how to solve the problem, the youth minister came out and explained that all the kids were wrong. They couldn’t throw anybody out of the boat because God might save them. One kids had the cajones to ask, “So, we just condemn them all to die from dehydration?” The answer: “Well, if it’s God’s will.”
It sounds warm and fuzzy on the surface, of course. Every life matters, suffering and pain are meaningful (even in infants!) and so on, but it celebrates passivity and victimhood and operates under the idea that allowing a woman to die, leaving a widowed spouse and orphaned children, is worth it so that a body without a brain can survive for a few hours of pain.
One of the saints venerated by the pro-life movement is, of course, a woman who died, leaving her husband with four motherless children, rather than have a hysterectomy, which the Catholic church would actually have been OK with, believe it or not.
Not exactly sure what I’m saying here other than that this is how they justify this cruelty and violence and that yeah, it’s totally fucked.
June 1st, 2013 at 1:01 pm
If people think this shit is “God’s will,” then their God is a fucking asshole.
June 2nd, 2013 at 10:47 am
Saudis, the “friends” of the United States have allowed this preacher who raped and tortured his 5 year old daughter to death is released after paying a fine…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-preacher-who-raped-and-tortured-his-five-yearold-daughter-to-death-is-released-after-paying-blood-money-8480440.html
June 2nd, 2013 at 12:26 pm
Anon #19
What do expect from a society of pedophile that use religion to prey upon women.