El Salvador: Court Hears Case on Total Abortion Ban

Inter-American Court Ruling Could Set Precedent in Latin America and the Caribbean

March 23, 2023

(Washington, DC) – An Inter-American Court of Human Rights hearing on the case of Beatriz, who was denied an abortion by El Salvador despite her high-risk pregnancy, will highlight the dire consequences of a law that completely bans abortion and is an opportunity for a step forward in the protection of reproductive rights in the region, Human Rights Watch said today.

“This is the first time the Inter-American Court will discuss the consequences of the total criminalization of abortion,” said Cristina Quijano Carrasco, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Its ruling on El Salvador, which has some of the world’s strictest anti-abortion laws, would set a precedent in Latin America and the Caribbean when it comes to abortion if a women’s life is in danger or if a fetus cannot survive outside the womb.”

Continued: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/23/el-salvador-court-hears-case-total-abortion-ban


Countries in the Americas should reinforce abortion protections, rights commission urges

El Salvador “stood out,” the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said, for 30- and 50-year sentences for homicide even though activists said women suffered miscarriages.

Feb. 1, 2023
By Reuters

MEXICO CITY — The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on Wednesday called for countries in the Americas to reinforce protections for women and girls seeking abortions, after observing measures that “go backwards” last year.

“Both material and formal measures were observed that go backwards in the guarantee of reproductive rights free of all forms of violence and discrimination,” the IACHR said in a statement.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/countries-americas-reinforce-abortion-protections-rights-commission-ur-rcna68574


El Salvador – How total abortion ban puts maternal health at risk

Study finds high rates of serious complications among Salvadoran patients who were forced to carry severely malformed fetuses to term

BY Nikki Rojas, Harvard Staff Writer
January 25, 2023

Pregnant patients in El Salvador, who, under the nation’s abortion ban, had no choice but to carry fetuses with severe malformations to term, experienced high rates of maternal morbidity, according to new research by Harvard sociologist Jocelyn Viterna and two partner Salvadoran physicians. The study, which examined 239 pregnancies with one of 18 malformations typically considered fatal between 2013 and 2018, appears in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology Global Reports.

In explaining why they took up their research, Viterna and co-authors Carolina Mena Ugarte and María Virginia Rodríguez Funes, wrote that a “striking number of national and subnational governments that previously allowed legal abortion in cases of severe fetal anomaly” had passed laws to remove the allowances, but that little was known about the maternal health implications.

Continued: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/how-total-abortion-ban-puts-maternal-health-at-risk/


El Salvador Recognizes Inter-American Court Ruling On Abortion

The judgment declares the Salvadoran State responsible for the violations of the judicial guarantees, integrity, and freedom of Manuela, a woman who died in prison while serving an abortion sentence.

10 January 2023
by teleSUR/MS

The Salvadorian government recognized a judgment issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in 2021 against it on the case of Manuela, a woman who died in jail while serving a 30-year sentence for abortion.

The IACHR judgment declares the Salvadoran State responsible for the violations of the judicial guarantees, integrity, freedom, and the right to equality before the law of Manuela and her family, for whom the State will seek alternative education and medical care as reparations.

Continued: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/El-Salvador-Recognizes-Inter-American-Court-Ruling-On-Abortion-20230110-0012.html


Jailed for abortion, freed Salvadoran women struggle to rebuild

Anastasia Moloney, Thomson Reuters Foundation
Nov 14, 2022 

BOGOTA – When convicted murderer Teodora Vasquez was freed after more than a decade in prison, the Salvadoran single mother faced a whole new challenge – a teenage son she barely recognized, a wall of rejection and a digital world she didn’t get.

Plus no way to make ends meet. “I had to start with nothing,” Vasquez recalled.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/article/el-salvador-abortion-women/feature-jailed-for-abortion-freed-salvadoran-women-struggle-to-rebuild-idUKL8N31X64Z


El Salvador woman’s 50-year jail sentence outrages abortion rights group

July 4, 2022
Reuters

SAN SALVADOR - A woman in El Salvador has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated homicide in a controversial case in which authorities argued she had killed her baby after giving birth, while her defenders said she had suffered a miscarriage.

Salvadoran authorities said the woman carried her baby to near-full term and gave birth in June 2020. After having the baby, she stabbed it in the neck six times, they said.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-womans-50-year-jail-sentence-outrages-abortion-rights-group-2022-07-04/


El Salvador – Abortion laws: The women jailed for suffering miscarriages

By Valeria Perasso and Fernando Duarte
Jun 30, 2022

Karen was sentenced to 30 years in prison in El Salvador in 2015 after being accused of having an abortion

When Karen woke up in an El Salvador hospital, she
noticed that she was handcuffed to a bed and there were police officers by her
bedside.

"There were a lot of people around and they were saying I had taken my
baby's life and that I was going to 'pay for what I had done'," Karen
tells BBC 100 Women.

Continued:  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61995250


Salvadoran women jailed for abortion warn US of total ban

By LUIS ANDRES HENAO and JESSIE WARDARSKI
Jun 9, 2022

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Teodora del Carmen Vásquez was nine months pregnant and working at a school cafeteria when she felt extreme pain in her back, like the crack of a hammer. She called 911 seven times before fainting in a bathroom in a pool of blood.

The nightmare that followed is common in El Salvador, a heavily Catholic country where abortion is banned under all circumstances and even women who suffer miscarriages and stillbirths are sometimes accused of killing their babies and sentenced to years or even decades in prison.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-politics-health-caribbean-religion-8dcebe19ea1d3f20ef288463f4392da4


El Salvador’s jailed women offer US glimpse of post-Roe future

‘Don’t let our reality become your reality,’ campaigners warn after woman is freed after decade behind bars for medical emergency ruled attempted murder

Nina Lakhani
Thu 19 May 2022

A33-year-old woman in El Salvador who suffered a medical emergency while pregnant has been freed after serving a decade in jail for attempted murder, the victim of a draconian abortion ban being replicated in the US.

The woman, named only as Jacqueline, sought medical help for an obstetric complication in 2011, and even though the baby survived, she was arrested on suspicion of attempted abortion. She was separated from her newborn daughter and eight-year-old son, and sentenced to 15 years for attempted murder.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/19/abortion-el-salvador-jailed-women-roe-v-wade


El Salvador gives woman accused of abortion 30 years prison

A court in El Salvador has sentenced a woman who suffered an obstetric emergency that ended her pregnancy to 30 years in prison for aggravated homicide

By The Associated Press
10 May 2022

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- A court in El Salvador has sentenced a woman who suffered an obstetric emergency that ended her pregnancy to 30 years in prison for aggravated homicide, according to a nongovernmental organization assisting in her defense.

The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion said Tuesday in a statement that a woman they identified only as “Esme” was sentenced Monday. The woman had already been in pre-trial detention for two years following her arrest when she sought medical care in a public hospital.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/el-salvador-woman-accused-abortion-30-years-prison-84630286