Beatriz survived her pregnancy, but at what cost?

[ismnotwasm]

Remember Beatriz? Remember Savita? Or rather, remember #RememberSavita?

Media has a funny way of making one story sound like the most important thing in the world, and then dropping that story like a hot potato a week later.

Savita was the woman who died in an Irish hospital after having been denied a life-saving abortion. Since then, Ireland passed its first abortion bill, making the procedure legal in a few limited circumstances, including when there is a threat to the mother’s life. Just last month, the country’s first legal abortion was carried out, saving a woman’s life.

Beatriz lives in El Salvador, and for months was denied a life-saving abortion by her government, which bans the procedure under any circumstances. Eventually, after widespread media coverage, El Salvador granted her a cesarean section (what was essentially a late term abortion), and she lived. Kathy Bougher notes over at RH Reality Check that “Beatriz’s fight to save her own life provided the citizens of El Salvador a real-time view of the actual meaning and costs of a law about which a large share of the population previously had little awareness.”

But what kind of life is she living now?

http://feministing.com/2013/10/01/beatriz-survived-her-pregnancy-but-at-what-cost/