CEDAW/C/50/D/22/2009 medical reports continued to note the same symptoms. Finally, on 23 April, a note on the presence of an ulcer with infected skin in the occipital area appeared in her medical report. 7.4 Given the facts described, the author rejects the State’s contention that it was the skin infection that caused the postponement of the surgery. She also rejects the statement that the surgery was not urgent but rather elective. Immediate surgery of this type offers the patient better chances of recovery. The doctors were aware of this, but only addressed it on 23 May, when the hospital issued a report recognizing that the operation was “essential in order to be able to begin rehabilitation therapy and to avoid compounding the problems and to avoid infections from prolonged hospitalization”. 10 The infections would not have occurred if the surgery and recovery had been done in time. Therefore, it has been demonstrated that L.C. was deprived of the medical services she required with the utmost speed. Denial of the therapeutic abortion as a necessary medical service in order to avoid serious and permanent harm 7.5 The possibility that the medical intervention might harm the foetus was prioritized over L.C.’s prospects for rehabilitation. This was confirmed by the express reason contained in the medical register which ordered the cancellation of the surgery and in the reports of the medical boards where what was to be discussed was whether forcing her to continue the pregnancy could bring about serious and permanent damage to the health of L.C. The first meeting of the board recommended postponement until the second trimester of gestation, when there would be less risk to the foetus, despite the recognition that the pregnancy would be high-risk. 7.6 The mental health of L.C. was completely overlooked in the evaluation concerning whether a therapeutic abortion was warranted. None of the medical evaluations concerning her mental health explored the consequences that would result from forcing L.C. to bring her pregnancy to term and become a mother. On 16 May 2007 a psychological evaluation took place. Only a brief paragraph in that report makes reference to the mental distress that the pregnancy caused L.C., stating that “when the topic of the pregnancy came up, she became unstable, rejected her pregnancy arguing that she could not raise a child because she was aware of her disability and that her mom was older and could not take care of her child”. The report, rather than exploring whether there would be grave and permanent mental harm to L.C. if she were forced to continue the pregnancy, simply prescribed relaxation techniques and “reprogramming of healthier thoughts and beliefs”. Similar conclusions can be obtained from the report of the third meeting of the medical board. The author recalls that mental health is an essential part of the right to health, as the Peruvian Constitutional Court itself has recognized. She insists that L.C. had the right to a therapeutic abortion on the grounds of the grave and permanent harm to her mental health that would have resulted from forcing her to bring to term a pregnancy that had resulted from a rape and destabilized her to the point of attempting suicide. Legal consequences of denying the provision of essential health services 7.7 L.C. was a victim of exclusions and restrictions in access to health services based on a gender stereotype that understands the exercise of a woman’s reproductive capacity as a duty rather than a right. By failing to comply with the legal duty to provide health services to L.C. (including reproductive health services), and having done so for discriminatory reasons arising from her status as a woman, considering her reproductive capacity to be of 10 A copy of this report is contained in the file. 11