A Roe v. Wade for Latin America was averted and the right to life upheld. This is what took place late last month in the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in Beatriz vs. El Salvador. But headlines obscured this victory for life and portrayed the ruling as a milestone in the quest for abortion rights in Latin America and around the world (see here and here).
(See this earlier post on the case with a video of the testimony of Paolo Carozza of Notre Dame Law School, whom the court called as an expert witness in the case.)
Why was Beatriz a victory for life?
Beatriz, an impoverished 22 year-old woman in El Salvador, gave birth in 2013 to a baby that had been diagnosed with anencephaly, a rare brain disorder, and the baby died not long after birth, as is sadly typical in such cases. Beatriz recovered from the birth without complications but was killed four years later in a motorcycle accident.
Abortion advocacy groups then decided to bring a suit against El Salvador’s government in hopes of eliciting a major ruling against the country’s laws prohibiting abortion. Beatriz’s death, they claimed, had resulted from her not enjoying a “human right to abortion.” After they lost their case before El Salvador’s Supreme Court, they brought the case before the IACHR, hoping further that this regional court would establish a right to abortion for all of Latin America.
Such a ruling – a Roe v. Wade for Latin America – would have defied some of the world’s strongest legal protections of the right to life. The American Convention on Human Rights – now ratified by 24 of the members of the Organization of American States – declares that the right to life shall be protected in law from the moment of conception, one of the strongest statements of the right to life in international law. El Salvador’s laws protecting life are some of the strongest such laws within states and are often the target of abortion rights advocates.
On December 20, 2024 the IACHR ruled in favor of the plaintiffs but in a highly narrow sense, requiring El Salvador to adopt more flexible medical protocols in high-risk pregnancies and to pay $40,000 to pro-abortion groups. Far more significant is what the court refrained from: declaring that abortion is a right. It did not even require exceptions for abortion or that abortion be decriminalized in any way in the laws of countries. It did not accept the plaintiffs’ argument that “obstetric violence” warrants abortion nor that Beatriz’s pregnancy and birth had contributed to her death. The ruling leaves intact the protection of the right to life in the American Convention and in El Salvador’s laws.
The decision merits far more notice. While in the United States attention focuses forcefully on domestic abortion politics, the contest is intense around the world. Much is at stake. The taking of unborn life is the largest global violation of human rights. Conservative estimates place numbers at around 12 million per year while other estimates claim 60 to 70 million per year. The advocacy of the right to abortion is aggressive in Latin America and Africa, where abortion is still widely prohibited, and finds its favorite forum in international law and international organizations. It has won major successes in Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia in recent years. In this global contest, the Beatriz decision is a major victory for the cause of life.