Facts About No-Abortion El Salvador


El Salvado has about 6 1/2 million people, about a million more than Minnesota.  There is a public health care system that spends only $24 per person per year. A private systems for wealthier people serves about 10% of the population. 

It has two laws in conflict with each other. One prohibits abortions with almost no exceptions. The other prohibits doctors from disclosing any information about their patients. In theory doctors cannot perform abortions nor disclose to anyone knowledge of illegal abortions. The government, which employees the doctors in public facilities, has told them they have an obligation of report illegal abortions. This is not technically true but some doctors who want to advance in the system comply.

The Ministry of Health, however, keeps track of the number of abortions. I don't know how it does this, perhaps by hospital admissions or monitoring of abortion medicines that are sent the mail. It reports over 6,400 abortions are performed per year in "no-abortion" El Salvador. 

There are a few, about a dozen, prosecutions of women each year who have had abortions. All of these come from doctors in public hospitals who reported, illegally, women have had illegal abortions. There are none from private hospitals whose patients have higher incomes. In her book, Her Body, Our laws, Michelle Obersman found those reported most were cases, not of early illegal abortions of which each doctor must seen many each month, but of late term home deliveries where there was a corpse.

The government's chance of success in a prosecution is much better when there is a corpse. In a famous case, a young woman was looking forward to a birth. She and her mother had purchased a baby bed. While she was alone, the pregnant woman suffered acute pain and passed out. Her mother returned home some hours later to find a dead baby and her unconscious daughter. Medical personnel notified police and the woman went to prison for an illegal abortion. A U.S. doctor told the author this kind of pain is often due to infection which could easily have been determined from the woman's discharge. No test was done. 

Several women now in prison had similar tragic stories of abortion convictions when they actually were looking forward to successful births. As with abortion in the U.S. being anti abortion serves political ends. In El Salvador a conviction now and then helps politicians offset the 6,400 abortions that continue year after year. 

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