Court confirms criminal sanction of Argentinian doctor who refused to abort 23-week-old baby

17th March 2020

The appeal of a doctor who refused to perform a legal late-term abortion on a 23-week pregnant woman was rejected Wednesday by a court in Rio Negro. The child is now two years of age and has been adopted. The court ruled that he had not fulfilled his duties as a public functionary in the local public hospital.
The woman had taken an abortion pill but the doctor decided to save the baby’s life. It was born at 35 weeks gestation. The woman alleged she had been raped.

Dr. Leandro Rodriguez Lastra’s 14-month suspended prison sentence has been confirmed and he will also be suspended from all public appointments for 28 months, as was decided by the first judges last May.

The appeal judgment on Wednesday was a divided decision, where one judge considered Rodriguez Lastra not guilty against the two others, Miguel Angel Cardella and Maria Rita Custet Llambí, who went further than the original trial judges.

Judge Cardella said the accused did not take into account the mother’s will “to decide about her body and health; they made her give birth. That’s gender-based and obstetric violence.”

The unborn child at the centre of the case is now a two-year-old little boy who is alive and well today.

Rodriguez Lastra’s lawyer, Damián Torres, told the local press that he considered the decision to be “ideological.”