Ecuador’s Crackdown on Abortion Is Putting Women in Jail

Ecuador’s Crackdown on Abortion Is Putting Women in Jail
For decades, abortion was considered a private matter. Now, a Nation investigation shows, women who terminate—or lose—pregnancies are facing prosecution and prison time.

By Zoë Carpenter
May 7, 2019 (May 20-27 Issue, The Nation)

Last year, a lawyer named Cristina Torres got a cryptic phone call from a young woman. The caller explained that she was contacting Torres on behalf of her mother, Sara (a pseudonym), who was imprisoned in the city of Latacunga, a windy crossroads on the Pan-American Highway, high on the volcanic plateau of central Ecuador. Sara was hoping to secure a form of legal relief that would allow her to serve part of her remaining sentence outside of detention. The woman asked Torres to take on her mother’s case—but as for the crime that Sara had been charged with, the daughter preferred not to speak of it. Just go visit my mother, she pleaded.

So Torres drove to Latacunga and, in the prison’s visiting room, met a tall woman with an upturned nose and honey-colored eyes. As Torres would learn, she’d had a difficult life. As a teenager, Sara said, she was raped by her aunt’s husband and became pregnant.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/ecuador-abortion-miscarriage-prosecution/


Las Comadres Is Fighting to Make Abortion Safe in Ecuador—Even While It’s Illegal

Las Comadres Is Fighting to Make Abortion Safe in Ecuador — Even While It’s Illegal
The group represents a new tactic in abortion-rights activism, which skirts legal restrictions and the often risky surgical procedures that defined clandestine abortions in the past.

By Zoë Carpenter
May 2, 2019

Quito, Ecuador — The first time Tamia Maldonado accompanied a woman through an abortion, she was just 18. They met at a lush, quiet park near the center of the city. There, Maldonado explained how to order the pills online, through a Dutch NGO that provides them cheaply and safely. Maldonado told the woman how to take them, what to expect afterwards, and what symptoms might indicate that something had gone awry. She gave her a pamphlet with instructions and the number for a lawyer, just in case.

Continued: https://www.thenation.com/article/abortion-activism-prosecutions-ecuador/