Women serving decades-long prison terms for abortion in El Salvador hope change is coming

Women serving decades-long prison terms for abortion in El Salvador hope change is coming

By Anna-Catherine Brigida
September 27, 2018

SAN SALVADOR — Alba Lorena Rodríguez was five months pregnant when she started to feel sharp pains in her stomach while at home in December 2009. She fainted. When she awoke, she says, she realized she had lost her baby.

Rodríguez, now 39, says she had a miscarriage. But the state accused her of killing the fetus, and she was convicted of aggravated homicide in a suspected abortion case. She denies having an abortion and says she mourned her miscarriage.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/women-serving-decades-long-prison-terms-for-abortion-in-el-salvador-hope-change-is-coming/2018/09/26/0048119e-a62c-11e8-ad6f-080770dcddc2_story.html?utm_term=.24ab690d1e6b&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&wpmm=1

El Salvador – They Were Jailed for Miscarriages. Now, Campaign Aims to End Abortion Ban.

They Were Jailed for Miscarriages. Now, Campaign Aims to End Abortion Ban.

By ELISABETH MALKIN
APRIL 9, 2018

SAN SALVADOR — When Teodora del Carmen Vásquez walked out of the Ilopango women’s prison a few weeks ago, she embraced her parents, her teenage son — and a movement to change an anti-abortion law that stole more than a decade of her life.

In El Salvador, where a total ban on abortion leads to an immediate suspicion of women whose pregnancies do not end with a healthy baby, Ms. Vásquez was marked as a criminal after she began bleeding and suffered a stillbirth. Sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide, she was released only after the Supreme Court ruled that there was not enough evidence to show she had killed her baby.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/world/americas/el-salvador-abortion.html

‘It’s time-critical’: the race to overturn abortion ban in El Salvador

'It's time-critical': the race to overturn abortion ban in El Salvador
Efforts to legalise abortion for first time since 1998 hinge on pushing through changes before conservative legislators take office in May

Teresa Welsh in San Salvador
Tue 3 Apr 2018

Moves to overturn El Salvador’s ban on abortion could be thwarted unless lawmakers work quickly to push through changes before a more conservative group assumes office in May.

Abortion is banned in all circumstances in El Salvador, and women accused of undergoing the procedure can be charged with aggravated homicide and sentenced to up to 50 years in jail. However, a bill proposed last August would legalise abortion in some cases.

continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/apr/03/lawmakers-el-salvador-race-to-overturn-abortion-ban