Rachel Maddow: So if a woman is going to be--if there's some medical scenario in which a woman will actually die if she tries to carry a child to term... legally she has to die, so the fetus can live?
Jack Hitt: Um, well, technically that would... that would appear to be true.
...
JH: An ectopic pregnancy is when the fertilized egg comes down the fallopian tube and gets stuck. It grows there, and will, uh, y'know, will not give birth. It will explode. The fallopian tube will burst. And, uh, then you'll have, y'know, a massive internal bleed. When that happens, the mother's life is at serious risk.
RM: Yeah.
JH: Um, in El Salvador, because the constitutional amendment protects the fetus from the very moment of conception, I spoke to a hospital director who explained to me their ectopic, um... policy was to bring an ectopic pregnancy--uh, pregnant woman into the hospital, and monitor the fetus until the rupture occurred.
RM: Wow.
JH: Then they would operate.
RM: Knowing that the rupture will occur, they have to wait until that happens, putting that woman in that kind of danger?
JH: Right. They have to, they have to maintain the fetal life until it naturally dies.
RM: Wow.
JH: So either the fetus has to die in the fallopian tube, or the tube bursts, and then of course you have a very dangerous medical procedure you have to undertake.
This was an interview with Jack Hitt, who's written "Pro-Life Nation", which will be the cover story for this Sunday's New York Times Magazine about El Salvador. Since 1998, all forms of abortion have been illegal, and there was a constitutional amendment to protect a fetus from the moment of conception since 1999.
Wonderful role model South Dakota has.
...by the way, the "forensic vagina specialist" apparently is an actual job in El Salvador. If a woman is suspected of having an abortion, the government can get what amounts to a search warrant for her vagina, and have a state-sponsored "forensic gynecologist" come and "examine the scene of the crime".
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