UN accused of lies, manipulation in effort to legalize abortion in El Salvador

San Salvador, El Salvador, Jul 4, 2021 / 15:10 pm

Salvadoran pro-life leader Sara Larín charged that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is lying and manipulating information about a case of infanticide in order to further the abortion agenda in El Salvador.

The current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet. During her time in office, Bachelet introduced bills to legalize abortion and to undermine parental rights.

Larín, founder of the VIDA SV Foundation of El Salvador, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, that “it is completely unusual and despicable that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is using Marina de los Ángeles Portillo’s release from prison on parole to pressure El Salvador on abortion.”

The OHCHR, the pro-life leader continued, falsely claims that the Portillo case "was an obstetric complication, when the newborn girl was actually found strangled with socks, one in her mouth and the other tied around her neck with a double knot."

On June 25, the OHCHR celebrated "the early release granted to Marina Portillo, who was prosecuted and sentenced after facing an obstetric emergency and after fourteen years she has the possibility of reuniting with her family."

In addition, the United Nations office asked El Salvador "to continue the review of cases where women have been detained for crimes related to obstetric emergencies and to harmonize the abortion legislation according to human rights standards in order to avoid new incarcerations."

Abortion in El Salvador is prohibited and the constitution recognizes "every human being as a human person from the moment of conception."

There are no women imprisoned for the crime of abortion in El Salvador. The sentences for this crime range between two and eight years in prison and the judges usually give alternative sentencing instead. 

In recent years, international organizations have manipulated cases of infanticides at the hands of their mothers to pass them off as supposed miscarriages, in repeated attempts to legalize abortion in El Salvador.

A report by VIDA SV, based on court documents, reveals that Marina de los Ángeles Portillo murdered her newborn daughter in May 2007.

Police found the baby with a white sock in her mouth and over her nostrils. Another sock was tied around her neck with a double knot.

The little girl's body had been wrapped in a blanket and placed in a black plastic bag.

VIDA SV said that "the forensic doctor determined that her cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation."

Portillo was sentenced to 35 years in prison on November 1, 2007, but recently was given early parole.

VIDA SV emphasized on its website that “early parole doesn't mean that Marina de los Ángeles Portillo has been proven innocent or that she was acquitted of the charges, but that she remains guilty of the crime for which she was convicted. However, she got the benefit of early parole which all inmates can get, as long as they meet the requirements of the law.”

Larín told ACI Prensa that “we at Fundación VIDA SV Foundation have Marina Portillo's complete file available on our website and the conviction states that the forensic exam determined that the baby had lesions (signs of strangulation) when she was already alive outside the womb.”

“We have also published the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice denying the request for pardon made by the pro-abortion lobby in 2015 in which the court responded to each one of the reasons presented by the feminists, clearly stating there is no relationship between this case of strangulation and an obstetric complication,” she added.

However, for Larín "what is truly intolerable is the complicity of United Nations officials in weakening the rule of law in El Salvador, pressuring the country to let incredibly cruel crimes against defenseless babies go unpunished."

"The UN is one step away from openly calling for the legalization of newborn infanticide," she charged.

Similarly, the Center for Reproductive rights based in New York has been falsifying the facts in the so-called Manuela case in an effort to get abortion legalized in the country. 

Julia Regina de Cardenal, president of the Yes to Life Foundation of El Salvador, told ACI Prensa in April that in that case the mother claimed a miscarriage but the baby was found thrown in a latrine “asphyxiated from inhaling feces and bled out from the violent way her umbilical cord was yanked from the base."

The mother was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2008 but died about two years later from cancer.

"The Manuela case,” De Cardenal continued, “as well as other cases that are being called miscariages or obstetric problems” in a campaign the abortion lobby has called ‘The Seventeen’ (17 women supposedly imprisoned for miscarriages) “has nothing to do with abortion.”

“The medical and forensic evidence” in the cases used by abortion advocates in El Salvador, “shows full-term babies strangled, stabbed, stoned, thrown in septic tanks, etc.,” the pro-life leader stressed.

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The Manuela case, which Larín has called “full of lies,” is before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights awaiting a decision.