Adilka Féliz: The Dominican Republic's Total Abortion Ban Takes Another Innocent Life

Women and teenage girls who face unplanned or unwanted pregnancies have no safe way to handle it. Moreover, women and doctors or midwives who assist them in getting abortions face prison sentences of 2 years or 5 to 20 years, respectively. Women in the Dominican Republic are forced, by law, to carry a pregnancy full term, with no exceptions.

As it stands, the only options to deal with an unwanted, unplanned, or non-viable pregnancy in the Dominican Republic are clandestine abortions, traveling to another country, which is impossible for most women because they don’t have the resources, or continuing with the pregnancy despite serious health risks, including death.

Tragically, many women die amid this total abortion ban.

Adilka Féliz: The Latest Tragedy

Adilka Féliz, 33 years old, was a legislative assistant who advocated for the 3 Causales, amongst other issues, to help make a difference in her country. She was a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother of one boy, Sebastián. Tragically, Féliz died during the course of her pregnancy because she was forced to carry it to term when it should have been declared unviable. This, like many other losses, was entirely preventable.

On February 27, at 23 weeks pregnant, Féliz went into premature labor after she had been advised that her pregnancy, which presented multiple complications, needed to be terminated. As reported by the Spanish-language news site, RCC Media, the former director of the National Health Service, Chanel Rosa Chupany, reported that Féliz’s death occurred due to the doctors' refusal to perform a cesarean section during her premature labor.

Instead of performing a C-section on her, doctors decided that, due to legal reasons, she should have a natural birth. She started to push, but there were complications. Her lungs filled with liquid, and she died of a heart attack; doctors tried for half an hour to resuscitate her, but to no avail.

According to Féliz’s mother, Berkis Paulino, who took to social media to raise awareness about the tragic loss of her daughter, Féliz’s last words were: "I, who have fought so hard for the approval of the three grounds for abortion, but how ironic is life, look at the position I find myself in today."

Paulino also made a direct plea to President Luis Abinader, writing in a Facebook post: "Mr. President, @luisabinader, you also have daughters, on behalf of Claurys Adilka Féliz Paulino, we demand to resume the approval of the three grounds in the Penal Code (with the due regulation). We, people of faith and who fear to displease God, request that these issues be regulated so that we don’t continue to lose valuable mothers and women.”

When Is Enough Is Enough?

Féliz is only the latest more high-profile case of avoidable maternal death.

In 2012, Damaris Mejía died of sepsis caused by a dead fetus in her uterus. Mejía, who was also a mother of two, was 16 weeks pregnant with her third child when she went to the hospital after experiencing severe abdominal pain. According to medical records and the first-hand accounts of her sister, Juliana Mejía, Damaris Mejía was told by several doctors that she had lost so much fluid that her unborn baby would likely die.

Photo provided by Juliana Mejía

Instead of providing a medically necessary abortion, Mejía was sent home multiple times with nothing more than pain medications. Under the total abortion ban, the medical staff argued they could not interrupt the pregnancy because while it was deemed unviable, the fetus wasn’t yet considered dead.

After her condition worsened, doctors were still unwilling to take the risk of performing a procedure that was still technically considered an abortion. Mejía died at home less than a week after she first sought help at a hospital, leaving her two children behind.

To this day, her sister Juliana Mejía continues to fight for the 3 causales in memory of her sister and to prevent future tragedies. Mejía told Luz Media that the damage didn’t end with the loss of her sister. She described a suicide attempt by her niece, an attempted suicide by the Mejías’ father, and ultimately, a successful death by suicide of their father. Their family never fully recovered from the loss of their beloved Damaris. A death that Mejía describes as “obstetric state violence.”

Photo Credit: Ana Isabel Martinez Chamorro

The Fight for Women’s Lives Continues