Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug 2, 2006 / 22:00 pm
The unborn child of handicapped woman who conceived through rape has been spared because he is too far developed for the abortion to be performed. The doctors who would have been tasked with administering the abortion refused to do so because technically it would have required "induced delivery."
The Health Minister of the Buenos Aires province, Claudio Mate, confirmed that since the mother was in her fifth month of pregnancy, "any kind of procedure carried out on her would no longer be an abortion but rather an induced delivery."
On Wednesday doctors at the San Martin Hospital-where the abortion was to take place-refused to carry out the procedure, after an ethics committee met to debate the length of gestation of the pregnancy. They warned of ethical and medical complications in administering abortion during the 19th week of development.
"In light of the advanced pregnancy of the young woman who is interned here, it is practically impossible to administer an abortion," Mate said, adding that "all of the parameters were determined and technically speaking any intervention we might carry out would no longer be an abortion but rather an induced delivery or mini-cesarean.