War On Women, International Theater

Katie McDonough at Salon:

After more than a month of delays, El Salvador’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday to deny a critically ill woman a lifesaving abortion. The 22-year-old woman, identified only as Beatriz, is 26 weeks pregnant with a nonviable, anencephalic fetus; her doctors have warned that, due to severe health complications related to Beatriz’s lupus, cardiovascular disease and kidney functioning, she may not survive the pregnancy.

Abortion is illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador, and the court’s ruling is final, according to her lawyers. “The only way now is to go to the international courts,” Victor Hugo Mata, one of Beatriz’s lawyers, told CBS News.

As Salon has previously reported, in addition to petitions from Beatriz and her doctors, President Mauricio Funes, El Salvador’s Ministry of Health, women’s rights advocates and international human rights groups each called on the court to grant the medically necessary procedure.

But the court was not moved to act, and Beatriz’s life now hangs in the balance, her lawyers say.

...

(Bolds mine. SB)

This is what happens when a society allows a majority religion to prevail in its domination of courts at law, and the religion... as religions will do... takes a position which, for most of us, is not only immoral but also stupid. You say it couldn't happen here in America? Perhaps not now, but if the religious fundamentalists are allowed their way, it could easily happen in the US. It is extremely important that the US maintain its constitutionally protected separation of church and state, and that matters of life and death be judged not on the commandments of a religion (even a majority religion) but upon long-established principles of law, independent of any particular religion. Otherwise, mark my words: it certainly could happen here.

My thoughts are with Beatriz, and my hopes for her survival, unlikely as that may be.

(H/T Digby.)