For nearly two months, 26-year-old María Teresa Salas has been lying in a hospital bed—brain-dead, unresponsive, her body sustained by machines. But her mother says the real nightmare isn’t the medical tragedy.
It’s the law.
Under El Salvador’s total abortion ban, María Teresa—though legally deceased—must remain artificially kept alive because she was 17 weeks pregnant at the time of her fatal brain hemorrhage. Doctors cannot terminate the pregnancy, and therefore, they cannot disconnect the life support.
“They’re torturing her body,” her mother, Lourdes Salas, told BBC News. “She’s gone. But the law says her body belongs to the state now.”
A leaked hospital memo shows internal staff were instructed not to speak to the press, and that armed police had been assigned to “ensure compliance with national law.”
The footage of María Teresa’s still body, released by El Faro, shows her hand turning grey as machines force oxygen into her failing lungs. The image has become a symbol for reproductive rights protests now sweeping Latin America.
Hospital staff say they’ve pleaded with the Ministry of Health for special permission to end care, but were denied. The Ministry issued a vague statement via its official Twitter account, saying the woman “remains in clinical custody pending fetal viability.”
“She’s not alive,” said Dr. Carla Méndez, a neurologist who reviewed her scans for La Prensa Gráfica. “There is no brain activity. None. This is a legal illusion.”
A recent poll by Statista shows over 71% of Salvadorans now support abortion in cases where the mother’s life is at risk—up nearly 20 points since last year.
The outcry isn’t just national.
The United Nations Human Rights Office issued a formal statement demanding intervention, calling the forced continuation of life support “an egregious violation of the right to dignity and bodily autonomy.”
Human Rights Watch has joined in, citing María Teresa’s case in a new global report on “post-mortem reproductive control.”
Even the Pope’s official bioethics adviser weighed in with sharp criticism, saying: “Death is not the beginning of maternity. It is the end.”
The protests on the ground are intensifying. Images posted from San Salvador show women lying motionless in hospital gowns outside the Supreme Court steps, wrapped in white sheets labeled “BORN TO BURY.”
Amnesty International’s regional director Erika Guevara-Rosas said the situation “strips all humanity from the deceased and the grieving.”
As the fetus now approaches 21 weeks, doctors fear complications. “Her organs are shutting down,” said a nurse speaking to CNN en Español. “Every hour increases the risk of full-body sepsis.”
Photos shared by María Teresa’s cousin on Facebook have now reached nearly 300,000 shares, with people across the world writing messages like: “Let her rest. She’s done enough.”
El Salvador’s government has shown no signs of yielding. President Nayib Bukele has not commented directly but retweeted a post about “protecting life at all costs.”
Doctors in the region are terrified the case will set a chilling precedent.
“This isn’t medicine anymore,” said Dr. Adriana Ruíz, head of gynecology at a private hospital in San Miguel. “It’s corpse incubation. And it could happen to any woman.”
Meanwhile, the family prepares for a third month of daily visits. “She’s bloated. Her skin is breaking down. She smells like she’s decomposing,” her mother said in a live interview with Telemundo. “But they won’t let us bury her.”
A final plea has been filed with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which could issue an emergency ruling within the week.
Until then, María Teresa Salas remains trapped between death and law—in a country where her voice, her body, and her choice were taken away.
