El Salvador is one of approximately 20 nations that protect preborn children from abortion, and pro-abortion organizations aim to see those protections revoked. Pro-abortion attorneys and organizations are seemingly working overtime to manipulate cases of infanticide in hopes of garnering support for legalized abortion.
A new case hit major media outlets last week, including the BBC, which erroneously reported that a woman named “Lilian” was finally freed from prison after being sentenced to 30 years for an “obstetric emergency.” The BBC wrote, “She gave birth to a girl in a public hospital in 2015, but the baby suffered health complications and died there three days later. … Prosecutors had accused Lilian of not taking care of the foetus during her pregnancy, and she was charged with negligence and aggravated murder.”
But this report, and others, are inaccurate at best. Sara Larin, president of the pro-life group FUNDACIÓN VIDA SV, has shared the truth.
Liliana’s baby was suffocated
According to Larin and the court documents she provided to Live Action News, Liliana Yesenia Alonzo Flores gave birth to her daughter on December 16, 2015, at the Hospital San Juan de Dios. Three days later, she left the hospital with her baby without authorization from the medical team. Concerned for the baby, doctors alerted the authorities that Liliana had fled the hospital with the baby. Upon her return to the hospital, she did not have the baby with her and she initially denied having been pregnant.
Later, she said she did give birth but claimed she handed her baby over to a couple in a hospital hallway. Liliana was arrested for abandonment and neglect of a person.
However, that same day, police received a call regarding the discovery of a deceased baby inside the nearby San Lorenzo Church. The baby was wrapped in hospital diapers and matched the description of Liliana’s baby. Forensic examinations found that the baby’s cause of death was acute pulmonary embolism as the result obstructed breathing.
According to Larin, the forensic report noted that the baby had cried, which indicates she was alive at birth. She also had an empty stomach and intestines, indicating she had been neglected. The baby girl likely endured about 20 minutes of distress before she died. It was determined the baby had either been smoothered, suffocated due to excessive crying after the mother failed to help the baby.
“Throughout the legal process, it was established that Liliana … was the only person who interacted with the baby while she was alive,” said Larin. “The existence of an adoptive couple could not be proven, leading the prosecution to change the charge from abandonment to aggravated homicide. Liliana was determined to be the sole caregiver for her baby. Media outlets initially reported that she had been sentenced to 30 years in prison for killing her newborn daughter, citing family and financial problems as motives.”
Liliana spent a reported seven years in prison for her daughter’s murder, but after The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion took up her case, she was freed.
Deliberately confusing the media
“The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion took on Liliana’s representation, appealed the verdict, and succeeded in changing the judge. The new judge released Liliana but imposed a ‘reserve’ to prevent further media inquiry into the reasons for her release,” Larin told Live Action News. “According to defense attorneys, it is presumed that Liliana was granted freedom due to attributing negligence to the hospital.”
Liliana’s attorney argued that the hospital was partially to blame for the baby’s death because there was evidence suggesting that the baby died due to an obstetric emergency and negligence. However, according to Larin, the original judgment did not determine that the hospital had anything to do with the baby’s death. It said the hospital had acted appropriately by reporting the situation to authorities per hospital protocol.
“[T]he legal team representing her has a history of using such cases strategically for political, media, and judicial purposes, aiming to advance the cause of abortion decriminalization in El Salvador,” said Larin. “They often secure favorable judgments through a network of judges aligned with their agenda. The request for confidentiality in the sentence review process may be an attempt to conceal a biased ideological position in favor of pro-abortion activists.”
Larin suspects that if the sentence review concludes that the hospital shares some responsibility in the child’s death, “it could potentially result in a lawsuit against the Salvadoran government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, similar to the Manuela vs El Salvador Case in 2021. In that case, the Court condemned El Salvador and arbitrarily ordered a reduction in sentences for infanticide to [four] years of imprisonment, in the name of ‘reproductive rights.'”
READ: The legal case that could force abortion upon El Salvador is based on a lie
Similar cases
In the case of Manuela vs El Salvador, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found El Salvador responsible for a series of violations including discrimination; however, Manuela’s son died from hemorrhaging caused by “tearing off the umbilical cord at its base.” A medical expert concluded that “apparently it was burst violently” and the baby boy had “mechanical obstruction of the upper passages” from feces after being tossed into a septic tank soon after birth. Though the case was presented as a woman wrongly charged, the child was obviously killed violently and deliberately.
“In the condemnation against El Salvador in the Manuela Case, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights mandated El Salvador to change the concept of medical professional secrecy in protocols for handling obstetric emergencies. This change aims to further conceal infanticide crimes. In other words, they seek to prevent doctors from notifying authorities when a woman arrives at a hospital with evidence of having given birth, yet the baby is missing. This approach would hinder the rescue or proper burial of the infants and the pursuit of justice in such cases,” said Larin.
A similar case, Beatriz v. El Salvador, is currently in the hands of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Beatriz Garcia had been denied an abortion, and according to the media, “later died.” But this is a manipulation. Beatriz did not die from a lack of induced abortion. She died due to a vehicle accident four years after her daughter’s birth (and death).
Beatriz, Manuela, and more than 50 other women allegedly jailed for miscarriages and obstetric emergencies due to El Salvador’s pro-life law were not convicted of abortion but of infanticide.
However, pro-abortion attorneys and organizations have twisted the truth to increase pressure on the government of El Salvador to allow abortion.
A pro-abortion strateegy
“This strategy has been employed consistently in other infanticide cases they have represented,” said Larin. “Through media manipulation, they portray these cases as unjust imprisonments resulting from the country’s anti-abortion laws. In reality, these are instances of infanticide, and the women involved are not charged or convicted of abortion-related offenses. In El Salvador, there are no women imprisoned for abortion, as these cases are rarely reported and, when prosecuted, seldom result in convictions.”
The maximum prison sentence for abortion in El Salvador is eight years, but Liliana was sentenced to 30 years because she was not found guilty of abortion but infanticide. According to Larin, women convicted of abortion in El Salvador never set foot in prison.
The pro-abortion lobby, because it is not able to find women in jail for abortion, presents cases of infanticide to the media as “obstetric emergencies.”
Larin explained:
I’d like to highlight the deceptive practice of labeling cases involving live, fully-formed newborns who have been brutally killed immediately after birth as ‘obstetric emergencies’:
This terminology is used by abortion activist lawyers who have filed numerous legal appeals before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights … and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights … to condemn the country.
Among the reparations they seek for the supposed victims (who are, in fact, the perpetrators) is the sinister intention to change the concept of ‘medical professional secrecy.’ They argue that doctors and personnel in public hospitals should not report cases like those of Liliana or Manuela to the authorities out of respect for ‘medical professional secrecy.’ However, professional secrecy worldwide does not include covering up crimes against life or physical integrity.
This is why they refer to infanticide as ‘obstetric emergencies’ – to make it appear as if it is a reproductive health right and to conceal the fact that it is a crime.
The non-government organization (NGO) that represented Liliana is the same pro-abortion organization that represented Beatriz. This NGO, said Larin, specializes in strategic litigation and works closely with the Center for Reproductive Rights, IPAS Central America, International Planned Parenthood Federation, and other pro-abortion groups such as the Ford Foundation and the Seattle Foundation.
Beatriz’s case has the potential to do to El Salvador and Latin America what Roe v. Wade did to the United States — implement the widespread forced legalization of abortion even in local governments that never wanted the killing of preborn children to be legalized.
Update 1/25/24: This article was updated with further details about ow the baby may have suffocated.
