Since last year, the left-wing party (FMLN) in El Salvador led by Congresswoman Lorena Peña (currently the majority party in Congress), attempted to legalize abortion.
Inan international campaign, they claimed that in our women’s prison there are 17 innocent girls who had spontaneous abortions with a sentence of 30 years. This is simply not true. The girls they reference were each sentenced for the homicide of a child delivered at term. The crime was discovered when these girls went to the hospital bleeding and claimed they didn’t know they had given birth. Of course, the doctors had to report them. Killing a baby is murder. Period.
The new law supported by the FMLN would allow abortion under the following conditions: 1) when the mother is at risk, 2) when the mother is pregnant through rape or “stupor” (pregnant by a family member or someone close to the family). 3) in a case of ectopic pregnancy, 4) when the mother has a terminal illness.
The FMLN was clearly hoping to gain a majority vote on this issue, but the March 4th elections proved disastrous for the party as they lost 8 seats.
When they saw that the people had voted against the governing party, Lorena Peña decided it was urgent to pass the law before May 1stwhen the right-wing party would take the majority of Congress. Not finding the other votes, Johnny Wright decided to re-write the law with only two allowable cases for abortion:1)Abortion in the first 12 weeks if the mother is a minor and she is pregnant through rape or stupor, with the consent of the parents and the doctors, and 2)when the mother is in danger and the doctor is indicating an abortion.
When individuals raised their voices to help to approve the law, the silent pro-life people started talking. In the newspaper, you could find the doctors association speaking out saying they did not need the law to try to help the women in difficult situations like pregnancy outside the womb or when the mother is sick because it is already their duty to try to save both patients. They said they were against abortion of any kind. TheGynecologist Association spoke and the Pediatricians too, defending life. Even the Private Enterprise Association spoke up! Different Pastors of all denominations came together to make a march on April 7th where Catholics and Evangelicals marched together. Different columnists wrote in the newspapers, college students also spoke up making a video in social media defending life.
Two weeks before the new members of Congress would take office, outside congress we had a party! Hundreds of pro-life people got together shouting, “Life yes, death no! Life yes, death no!” That was the day that the law was going to be discussed: April 18!
Thousands of people were praying that the law would not be discussed.
That day, a miracle happened. There was no discussion because the congressmen and women who were in doubt if they would give the vote to pass the law, talked and decided they were pro-life.
Every life is important and as our constitution says, we recognize life since the moment of conception.
April 25thwas their last day in Congress and last opportunity. The pro-life party did not want to take any chances, so, again hundreds of people went to Congress to rally against abortion. Pro-life congressman (and women) congratulated all the crowd for coming and the law was not discussed.
So for now, abortion is not legal in El Salvador and life prevails!
