The "natural" way
by digby
Maternal death:
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.
“[The Supreme Court is] saying Beatriz is not in danger and she must pursue the natural way of delivery and we must see what happens,” Mata told CBS. ”Everyday, the health of Beatriz is [getting] worse. If they wait another week or two weeks, she will be too feeble to endure the operation.”
This is absolutely barbaric. But it is consistent. If you believe that a fetus cannot be aborted under any circumstances because it is a person entitled to all the rights of any other person, including the woman in whose body it resides, then you logically cannot make the choice to save the mother even if the fetus will definitely die. Which it will:
Anencephaly is a cephalic disorder that results from a neural tube defect that occurs when the rostral (head) end of the neural tube fails to close, usually between the 23rd and 26th day of conception, resulting in the absence of a major portion of the brain, skull, and scalp.[Strictly speaking, the translation of the Greek term to English is "no brain" (that is, totally lacking), but it is accepted that children with this disorder are born without a telencephalon, the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres, including the neocortex, which is responsible for cognition. The remaining brain tissue is often exposed, i.e. not covered by bone or skin.
The prognosis is death.
That they will put that anencephalic fetus, already tragically doomed to die, on the same plane as a 22 year old women who can be saved, is moral depravity. There's just no other term for it.
To call it "natural" is to say that women are "naturally" less worthy of living than a fetus with no brain.