The Beatriz Conundrum: Killing Versus Letting Die

Many people prochoice people have expressed bewilderment as to why the life of Beatriz's baby should even have come into account in making decisions about how to deal with the mother's pregnancy complications, since the baby was doomed to die anyway due to anencephaly. Some have even expressed outrage that any thought at all was given to the baby's life or comfort.

The procedure used to treat Beatriz's health issues was carried out past the point of typical viability at 24 weeks, so it was not any kind of abortion, be it direct or indirect abortion, but was rather garden-variety emergency c-section. However, the most strident abortion rights activists are insisting that the delivery was a hysterotomy abortion, which is performed like a c-section but with the direct intent of achieving the baby's death. The plan when performing a hysterotomy is to set the child aside to die alone from hypothermia and oxygen deprivation. Clearly this was not the case when Beatriz's baby was delivered, since she was taken to the nursery, placed in an incubator, and provided with all the care that was appropriate for a baby with anencephaly. However, just to avoid getting sidetracked into an argument about whether an emergency c-section to deliver a moribund baby is actually a hysterotomy, for the sake of discussion I will proceed as if this life-saving, baby-sparing c-section was actually an indirect abortion.

There is a thought experiment that I think illustrates the distinction between direct abortion (the deliberate killing of the fetus) and indirect abortion (treating the mother's health problems even if that inevitably causes or hastens the death of the baby).

Imagine that two people are trapped in a collapsed building. Sally is fatally injured; she has suffered such severe crush injuries to her internal organs that nothing can be done to save her. However, the pressure of the rubble on her body is pinching shut major blood vessels and keeping her from rapidly bleeding to death.

Jane, on the other hand, has treatable injuries, and needs to be transported to a fully equipped hospital. The faster she is rescued and gotten to the hospital, the greater her chances of a full recovery.

The dilemma for the rescuers is that they can not reach Jane without first getting Sally out of the way.

There are four options:

1. Do nothing that would hasten Sally's death, but wait for her to die before rescuing Jane, even if this might mean that Jane dies. This would be comparable to taking no action to end a life-threatening pregnancy.
2. Carefully remove Sally from the rubble even though this will hasten her death. This would be comparable to an emergency delivery that would hasten the baby's inevitable death.
3. Kill Sally via lethal injection prior to removing her body from the rubble. This is comparable to the abortion methods that use lethal injection to kill the baby before either mechanically removing it or inducing labor.
4. Simply wrench Sally out of the rubble, pulling her body apart by force so that the dismemberment, rather than the removal of the rubble, is what directly causes her death. This is comparable to a standard D&E abortion.

I don't think anybody would recommend Option 1.

Prolifers advocate Option 2, which is to treat Sally with respect and gentleness while saving Jane's life, and taking no action to directly kill her.

This is the option that the courts in El Salvador instructed doctors to follow when caring for Beatriz. From our perspective, prochoicers are angry that doctors did not legally have Option 3 or Option 4 -- flat out killing Beatriz's baby -- as a choice. And we're shocked and bewildered that doctors had to be forced to treat Beatriz's baby with gentleness and respect, that they wanted to just flat out kill the baby rather than allow her to have her short time experiencing the world outside the womb. She was kept warm and comfortable, and if there was not such indifference or outright hostility toward her, she could have been held, loved, and nurtured if only for a brief time. We can't understand why anybody would begrudge her that.

Nobody wanted Beatriz left to die. We just didn't want her baby to be utterly forsaken and treated like a burst appendix or a tumor. We just wanted her to have the simple dignity that is due to every human being.

To us, that doesn't seem to be that much to ask.

International Abortion Movement Now Calling Life-Saving C-Section "Abortion"

The political theater isn't over in the Beatriz saga.

The script being staged by the pro-abortion Left called for one of two endings: a granted abortion with a live mother or a denied abortion with a dead mother. Either one would have provided the desired political and PR leverage. But Big Abortion got an ending they hadn't counted on: a denied abortion and a live mother. This accursed outcome threw a monkey wrench into everything.

The live mother/non-aborted baby outrages the abortion advocates. It doesn't fit the planned narrative. So they have decided to redeem the situation. They have opted to get back on script. and they're doing it by insisting that Beatriz's life-saving non-baby-killing C-section was actually a "hysterotomy abortion."

Yesterday in El Salvador, Beatriz (a pseudonym) had an abortion. The Catholic Church and the international anti-choice movement are desperate to deny this reality, so the anti-choice spin machine is in high gear, engaging in linguistic gymnastics to suggest otherwise.

And much of the media is taking the bait.

Beatriz had a hysterotomy, a form of abortion carried out through c-section....

In parroting what anti-choicers and the government of El Salvador are saying, many media outlets are glossing over and ignoring what actually happened in El Salvador.

In other words, even though prolifers, the government of El Salvador, and anybody with a modicum of medical knowledge knows that a c-section with the intent to deliver a living child is not an abortion, abortion advocates will insist with their dying breath that it was an abortion in order to avoid being embarrassed into admitting that a woman's life can be saved by some means other than killing her baby.

The New York Times, for instance stated that the “ill Salvadoran woman … delivered her 27-week-old fetus” and quoted El Salvador’s Minister of Health, María Isabel Rodríguez as saying, “At this point, the interruption of the pregnancy is no longer an abortion. It is an induced birth.” Rodríguez elaborated that it could be “either an abdominal or vaginal birth.” Meanwhile, Reuters uncritically reported that the c-section permitted El Salvador to avoid having to allow Beatriz an abortion.

How about that? The New York Times and Reuters went with the facts instead of simply reworking an abortion-advocacy organization's press release. It's no doubt infuriating for Big Abortion when the lapdogs don't obey commands.

Here's where they get really ridiculous:

Beatriz’s doctors knew ten weeks into her pregnancy that she needed an abortion to save her life, and even in El Salvador, a country in which doctors go to jail for performing abortions, her physicians began petitioning the government for an exception to the law.

 If she needed an abortion to save her life when she was 10 weeks pregnant, how is it that she managed to deliver a living baby at 26 weeks?

Doctors also knew something else: Beatriz was carrying a fetus with no brain, and therefore it could not survive outside the womb under any circumstance.

 Ah! See? Beatriz was carrying a "defective" baby. And if it's an absolute right to deprive a healthy baby of decades of life "on demand," then surely it's right to deny one of those yucky anencephaly babies a few hours of life outside the womb when her mother is sick. 

While the Ministry of Health agreed the abortion was warranted (again, a profoundly unusual circumstance in El Salvador), the Catholic Bishops, anti-choice groups, and the attorney general would not budge, threatening to put both doctors and patient in jail.

So the Ministry of Health agreed with the doctors who turned out to be wrong. Politics or medical judgment? Well, who turned out to be right in the end?

The turning point came when an international campaign was launched, and every relevant court and human rights body was petitioned. Yet despite pressure from human rights bodies in the region and internationally, El Salvador’s Supreme Court refused to budge, and Beatriz was denied an uncomplicated early abortion and subsequently also a less complicated second trimester procedure. She was therefore pushed into the third trimester, with her health failing to “save” a fetus that could not be saved. Finally, in the face of mounting international opprobrium, she was given a hysterotomy, which anti-choicers are spinning as though it were a normal c-section.

Thankfully, Beatriz has survived the late abortion and is doing well....

Damn you antichoicers for saving her life without killing the baby! But it was an abortion! It was it was it was it was it was! Because if doctors saved her life without breaking the law, we can't scream that the law killed her!

Now they change tactics and say that the delay in ending the pregnancy means that Beatriz "faces unknown health consequences," which translates to "So big deal, she's fine now. She might get sick later and it'll be all your fault, you antichoicers!"

They're saying that Beatriz is poor and saddled with medical bills -- for which the solution is for somebody else, perhaps the prolifers who certainly wouldn't mind, to pay the medical bills. We do that sort of thing for pregnant women all the time anyway.

Abortion advocates are angry because Beatriz's baby died a
natural death rather than being killed like this, by dismemberment.
Now they are trying to reclassify emergency c-sections as
"abortions" in cases where the baby has health problems.

They then go on to quote a doctor who explains the difference between abortion methods used at 26 weeks and he explains that for an abortion, if they can't get the cervix dilated enough to pull the baby out in pieces or to kill the baby first and then induce labor, "then a cesarian section is entertained. (Actually, we use the word, “hysterotomy” in these situations in an attempt to differentiate it from a delivery of a viable fetus)."

Here's where we get to the crux of how they're trying to classify the c-section as an abortion: Beatriz's baby was not "a viable fetus" because it had anencephaly.

So they're using the definition of "viable" used to distinguish the maturity of the fetus and rework it to cover any baby that has a fatal condition.

Ambra had anencephaly.
She lived for three hours.

This unnamed doctor notes that yes, a c-section is riskier than a vaginal delivery of a live baby, a killed baby, or a baby in the process of being dismembered. But the c-section in question being chosen for Beatriz was chosen by her doctors for whatever reasons they chose. They still had the option to choose a vaginal delivery. We don't know why they didn't but I'm going on the assumption that they had a good reason from a medical standpoint -- unless, of course, they chose a c-section rather than inducing labor to heighten the political theater by increasing the risk to Beatriz. Which at this point I wouldn't put past them.

Certainly the doctor who is writing to the abortion enthusiasts is part of the political theater. Look what he/she says next:

“It may be more palatable in the public eye that Beatriz undergoes a c-section,” the doctor continued. “However this is certainly not the preferred method [in the case of a] fetus that is anencephalic (absence of higher-function brain tissue) and therefore incompatible with life."

Actually, usually the doctors and the parents decide together which approach to take. A c-section increases the anencephalic baby's chance of surviving the birth process and living long enough to know what it is to be held and loved. Parents and doctors usually balance the mother's health and the family's leanings toward a natural birth versus possible time spent holding a living baby. 

So the abortion advocates are lying on multiple counts:

1. The court specifically said that the baby's life was to be spared, and that the living baby was to be delivered at the moment that was best for both mother and child.
2. The entire point of a hysterotomy is a dead baby. That is what distinguishes it from a c-section.
3. Both scheduled and emergency c-sections have been routine means of delivering babies whose mothers health or life is at risk for nearly a century, and that includes delivering babies with fatal conditions.
4. Even if the baby dies, be it from complications prematurity or from a terminal condition, that doesn't change the fact that a c-section performed for the mother's physical health is still a c-section performed for the mother's physical health.

Still, in order to be able to claim  that they were right, that Beatriz truly "needed an abortion," the abortion lobby is re-defining c-sections to be abortions if the baby dies shortly afterward. This is an insult and a slap in the face to every mother who lost a child after an emergency c-section.

How desperate and pathetic do they need to be? And how low can they sink?

UPDATE:

Thanks to Melissa for providing a link to this Spanish-language article, which certainly adds an interesting big of information: Beatriz had already gone into labor when doctors elected to switch from a vaginal delivery to a c-section to preserve her health. So not only was the baby not killed -- the pregnancy was not even artificially terminated! It was in the process of ending on its own! (Read it here run through Google Translate.)

What's the Spanish equivalent of "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"?