A doctor in Argentina who was convicted for stopping a chemical abortion after the mother suffered complications has been released from jail.
In 2017, OB/GYN Leandro Rodríguez Lastra was working at the hospital when a 19-year-old woman came in, suffering severe pain after ingesting misoprostol, part of the abortion pill regimen. She had been raped, and was 23 weeks pregnant. The woman had an infection and was in danger of septic shock; she was in danger of losing her uterus and of dying.
According to CitizenGo, Rodríguez Lastra did not commit a surgical abortion procedure, but instead, consulted with the mother, hospital management, neonatologists, psychologists, and social workers to come up with a plan of action. The mother was stabilized, and at 35 weeks, he performed a c-section, and the baby was placed for adoption. Both mom and baby’s lives were saved.
The mother was not the person who took Rodríguez Lastra to court — that was Representative Marta Milesi, an abortion activist.
“I received a patient in generally poor condition due to an advanced pregnancy, and I made the decision to stop the process of giving birth prematurely that was going on and improve the patient’s state of health,” Rodríguez Lastra told EWTN Noticias. “This was interpreted by the justice system, or by the Rio Negro Judiciary, as having overridden the patient’s will to terminate the pregnancy, and so in 2019 I was convicted, and this sentence has just been completed.”
After the original trial, he said the woman in question was abandoned by the abortion activists who exploited her case, saying that “once the trial was over, the sentence issued, this woman was abandoned and no one else cared for her; unfortunately she had to seek help” to survive.
He also denied that cases like this are for the protection of women and that even having gone to prison, it was all worth it.
“Those arguments, speaking of defending rights, were absolutely false, and the only thing they tried to do was destroy the life of a child who is now about to turn 7 years old, who is happy, with an adoptive family that is taking care of him and giving him the future that any of us deserve. They couldn’t do anything about that,” he said. “The child is alive, the woman who was a victim of all this is fine, she’s healthy; therefore in that aspect I am satisfied because life triumphed, truth triumphed, beyond the injustices that [I] suffered.”
He also urged other doctors to follow his lead, and protect life no matter what.
“When I was sentenced, and before I was sentenced, they looked for a kind of remorse in me, or another message,” he said. “No. The message is the same and with more and more conviction: Life must be defended; that’s not up for discussion.”
