A Pro-life Nation

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine has a sober look at what one pro-life nation, El Salvador, looks like:

In this new movement toward criminalization, El Salvador is in the vanguard. The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries where abortion is circumscribed — rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of the mother — don't apply in El Salvador. They were rejected in the late 1990's, in a period after the country's long civil war ended. The country's penal system was revamped and its constitution was amended. Abortion is now absolutely forbidden in every possible circumstance. No exceptions.

There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal.

El Salvador's Catholic church was once led by the murdered Archbishop Oscar Romero and known for its liberation theology and commitment to economic and social justice. But now the church is led by an Opus Dei member, Archbishop Fernando Lacalle, who has steered the church in a rightward direction and actively promoted the anti-abortion policies.

Sadly, this is the direction some of our political and religious leaders are working to take us.