Her name is not Belén, but that fictitious name that her case took will remain forever after the three years she spent unjustly imprisoned after health personnel at the hospital where she arrived doubling in pain denounced her for generating an abortion. She, Bethlehem, didn't even know she was pregnant. And his case exposed a machinery of terror that is far from behind us.
Graffiti in the Rivadavia Hospital against abortion (Twitter) City of Buenos Aires although the pro-lifers wanted to stop it, a non-punishable abortion was performed at the Rivadavia Hospital Graffiti in the Rivadavia Hospital against abortion
Can a woman who arrives at the hospital seeking medical help in an emergency be reported to the police? Is it possible if the doctor finds, for example, an induced abortion or drug use? The law says no. The Supreme Court, which analyzed the law, confirmed that it did not. The international treaties to which Argentina recognizes constitutional status insist that no, it cannot. And yet...
María Lina Carrera, Natalia Saralegui Ferrante and Gloria Orrego-Hoyos are lawyers and teachers. They know the law and wonder why it is ignored daily across the country. The answer is found in the book they have just published: A patient enters, a complaint comes out. The medical, legal and religious machinery that allows criminal proceedings against patients (XXI Century).
Testimonies
The investigation collected more than a hundred testimonies. The authors interviewed health and judicial personnel and inquired about their knowledge of medical secrecy. Were they trained in this area? Did you receive classes about it in your undergraduate careers? And once faced with the case: were they forced to make these inadmissible complaints or to process them in the justice system?
Soledad Deza, Belén's defense lawyer, announces that the Supreme Court of Justice of Tucumán ruled the freedom of the young woman.
The book demonstrates forcefully that the sum of ignorance and fear can be devastating. Dozens of doctors violate professional secrecy and dozens of judicial officials accept this crime by feeding flawed cases from the beginning.
"The violation of medical secrecy is a transgression of a moral duty and a criminal offense in the Argentine Republic. However, there are too many cases, in which medical personnel violate secrecy to formulate criminal complaints against their patients, "explains Dr. Agustín Iglesias Díez in his article "Bad education: the systematic violation of medical secrecy in Argentina".
The expert adds that these cases, "which are usually annulled by the higher courts, allow victims to be subjected to severe cases of institutional violence during their processing in the lower courts." For him as well as for the authors of Entra una paciente, sale una denuncia, this phenomenon is a consequence of deficiencies in medical education, which persist to this day.
It is on these absences that fear and the living on duty (militants of the Catholic Church many of them) are mounted, who pressure to subject women to the derision of being involved in an alleged crime.
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