A Deafening Silence: The Inter-American Court’s Failure to Address Abortion in in Beatriz v El Salvador

24.07.25
Alicia Ely Yamin, Sabrina Ochoa

As clashes over sexual and reproductive rights are presently used in culture wars and lawfare, the recent decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Beatriz v. El Salvador is a missed opportunity to consolidate the Court’s jurisprudence on sexual and reproductive health and rights and defend the legitimacy of international human rights law. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután, El Salvador, who, after experiencing a high-risk pregnancy due to Lupus, found herself pregnant a second time. Despite medical consensus among fifteen doctors of the lack of fetal viability and the immediate harm to Beatriz, she was forced to wait in physical and mental anguish for months as various institutional and judicial entities deliberated on whether to allow her doctors to perform a therapeutic abortion.

Continued: https://opiniojuris.org/2025/07/24/a-deafening-silence-the-inter-american-courts-failure-to-address-abortion-in-in-beatriz-v-el-salvador/


El Salvador violated woman’s rights in high-stakes abortion case, court rules

By Reuters December 20, 2024

SAN JOSE/SAN SALVADOR - El Salvador violated a woman's rights after denying her an abortion in 2013 despite doctors' calls to terminate her high-risk pregnancy, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR)said on Friday.

The case of the woman, a domestic worker known as Beatriz, became a symbol of El Salvador's blanket ban on abortion, which punishes with prison time those who undergo the procedure, perform it or assist with it.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-violated-womans-rights-high-stakes-abortion-case-human-rights-court-2024-12-20/


Beatriz v El Salvador: the abortion case that could set a precedent across Latin America

Activists targeted as US-linked hard-right campaigns sow disinformation ahead of inter-American court of human rights ruling on case of woman who was denied abortion in 2013

Sarah Johnson, The Guardian
Mon 2 Dec 2024

Earlier this year, Morena Herrera woke up to find that a video about her had been posted on social media. It claimed that the 64-year-old campaigner for abortion rights in El Salvador had “chased down” a young woman in hospital and “terrorised” her into seeking an abortion.

The young woman was Beatriz, who had been denied an abortion in 2013, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus would not have survived outside the uterus.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/02/el-salvador-antiabortion-international-campaign-disinformation-hate-activists-laws-ban-human-rights


Guatemala – Hidden in plain sight: The lobby group restricting rights in Latin America

Founded by members of shadowy Catholic organisation Opus Dei, the AFI has become one of Guatemala’s most influential groups

26 November 2024
OpenDemocracy

In the first half of this year, seven girls aged between 10 and 14 gave birth in Guatemala every single day.

Guatemalan law states that these 1,298 girls are the victims of sexual violence. Medical professionals say their pregnancies pose a high risk to their physical and mental health. But the Asociación la Familia Importa (AFI), Guatemala’s most influential anti-abortion organisation, has focused on preventing such girls from having abortions at any cost – and it is succeeding.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/afi-guatemala-opus-dei-anti-abortion-restrict-rights-latin-america/


‘The hope of the country’: Reproductive health activist on El Salvador’s historic abortion case

October 29, 2024
By Tracy Glynn

Wendy Barrera Rivas from El Salvador was one of three youth activists touring eastern Canada this month. At every stop, she shares the story of Beatriz, who she calls “the hope of the country.”

Beatriz was a 21-year-old mother living with lupus and in extreme poverty in El Salvador when she became pregnant with a fetus that was developing without a skull and brain. Doctors advised her to end her pregnancy that was putting her life at risk. Due to a ban on abortion in El Salvador, Beatriz was unable to get an abortion. Her health suffered and tragically, in 2017, she died from injuries sustained in a road accident. She was 27.

Continued: https://www.healthcoalition.ca/youth-activists-tour-canada-to-talk-about-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights/


Costa Rica Threatens IACHR Departure on Abortion

By Ileana Fernandez
December 16, 2023

In a recent interview, President Rodrigo Chaves of Costa Rica acknowledged the possibility of withdrawing the country from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court) if the court mandates changes to national legislation on abortion.

The discussion arose in connection with the ongoing analysis of the “Beatriz case” against El Salvador by the IACHR Court.

Continued: https://ticotimes.net/2023/12/16/costa-rica-threatens-iachr-departure-on-abortion


Welcome to El Salvador: Forty years’ jail for your miscarriage

2016 Issue 3, Conscience
By Andrew Buncombe
Posted Dec 20, 2016

When Maria Teresa Rivera was jailed in El Salvador for 40 years after suffering a miscarriage, the authorities would not allow her to keep a photograph of her son, Oscar. So she would shut her eyes and call up moments from the past, memories that burned bright and deep, and which allowed her to form an image of the youngster in her mind. Being away from Oscar for the five years she eventually served was the most difficult aspect of her incarceration. “Sometimes I would feel sad and desperate,” she told me, a few days after she was released this past spring. “I would go to the church and pray. It helped a lot.” Ms. Rivera, 33, was a victim of what is probably the most draconian legal situation in the world for repro­ductive rights.

[continued at link]

Source: Conscience