Why is El Salvador letting a woman die?
This past month, the world has been watching a 22-year-old pregnant woman in El Salvador die, little by little. I want to say it is like watching an accident happen in slow motion, but this situation is no accident. El Salvador’s government is deliberately denying lifesaving treatment to the woman, for no reason other than that she is pregnant.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, religion, and conscience. But international human rights standards do not protect our right to express those thoughts or that conscience in a manner that infringes on other people’s human rights.
(via hopeisreal42)
The argument that access to sexual health care or information causes promiscuity is offensive to women and has been proven false time and again. Yet it seems unlikely that it we will end anytime soon.
Did you know? A 1998 law in El Salvador prohibits all abortions.
Without exception.
Beatriz wants to live. She’s 22 years old and the mother of an infant, but the 18 week pregnancy she’s carrying is killing her — right now as you read this — and the government of El Salvador has refused to permit an exception to their abortion ban to save her life.
The fetus Beatriz is carrying is anencephalic; it has no brain and won’t survive birth even if her health allowed her to carry to full term. More to the point, Beatriz has lupus, worsened by a kidney malfunction, and it’s very dangerous for her to be pregnant. But under El Salvador’s abortion ban, both Beatriz and any medical staff involved in providing a therapeutic abortion would face criminal charges, carrying penalties as high as 50 years in jail for her and 12 years in jail for her doctors.
Both El Salvador’s Minister of Health and Attorney General for Human Rights support allowing an exception to save Beatriz’ life, yet the Supreme Court has delayed making this literally life and death decision. Now this impoverished young mother has entered early stage renal failure as her pregnancy steadily destroys her kidneys.
Sign now to stand with Beatriz’ husband and infant son today in asking the Salvadoran government to allow her doctors to save her life and their future together as a family.
Please sign to save her life!! She has a family (incl an infant and a husband) who need her alive and well!
GOOD NEWS! The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is now officially telling El Salvador to give Beatriz an abortion. Let’s keep up the pressure! Please sign and reblog! http://bit.ly/SaveBeatriz
Beatriz wants to live. She’s 22 years old and the mother of an infant, but the 18 week pregnancy she’s carrying is killing her — right now as you read this — and the government of El Salvador has refused to permit an exception to their abortion ban to save her life.
The fetus Beatriz is carrying is anencephalic; it has no brain and won’t survive birth even if her health allowed her to carry to full term. More to the point, Beatriz has lupus, worsened by a kidney malfunction, and it’s very dangerous for her to be pregnant. But under El Salvador’s abortion ban, both Beatriz and any medical staff involved in providing a therapeutic abortion would face criminal charges, carrying penalties as high as 50 years in jail for her and 12 years in jail for her doctors.
Both El Salvador’s Minister of Health and Attorney General for Human Rights support allowing an exception to save Beatriz’ life, yet the Supreme Court has delayed making this literally life and death decision. Now this impoverished young mother has entered early stage renal failure as her pregnancy steadily destroys her kidneys.
Sign now to stand with Beatriz’ husband and infant son today in asking the Salvadoran government to allow her doctors to save her life and their future together as a family.
When Eden Foods’ CEO Michael Potter first joined the federal lawsuit in opposition to the new requirement to provide birth control for female employees in any company health plan, he claimed it was a religious objection. Now, according to a recent interview in Salon, he’s revealed that he doesn’t want to cover it because he’s a man.
For private companies to claim that they should be legally treated like churches is bad enough, but to claim that they should be able to discriminate against their employees because the CEO is a different gender? Ridiculous.
Sign the petition to demand that Mr. Potter and Eden Foods drop out of the birth control lawsuit.
Reading through his comments, the more Potter talks, the worse it sounds. From Salon:
“I’ve got more interest in good quality long underwear than I have in birth control pills, … Because I’m a man, number one and it’s really none of my business what women do,” Potter said. So, then, why bother suing? “Because I don’t care if the federal government is telling me to buy my employees Jack Daniel’s or birth control.”
Birth control is like long underwear? Like whiskey? No, Mr. Potter, birth control is healthcare. No company’s employees should go without routine healthcare that they work hard to earn just because their boss thinks it’s silly.
(via sexy-pekingese)
Despite the most aggressive push yet, anti-choice legislators failed in their attempt to force poor women to give birth by cutting off abortion funding. Why? Because they hate birth control.
Imagine the thought of restricting abortion access for poor people and then helping them get birth control on top of that! How horrible!
