Central America: Home to the world’s strictest abortion laws

July 28, 2023
By Ana de Leon

Panama City (EFE) - The world’s strictest abortion laws are found in the countries of Central America, where women can face long prison sentences if convicted of deliberately ending their pregnancies.

And even in cases of miscarriages or stillbirths, women can be accused of killing their babies and end up behind bars.

Four of the 10 countries worldwide with the most severe penalties for abortions are located in Central America and the Caribbean: El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, which completely ban that medical procedure.

Continued: https://www.laprensalatina.com/central-america-home-to-the-worlds-strictest-abortion-laws/

28.07.2023

News

aggravated homicide

Beatriz

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

El Salvador – When Abortion Bans Are Too Popular to Overturn

A court may soon rule against El Salvador’s anti-abortion law. But will that make a difference?

APRIL 24, 2023
By Anna-Catherine Brigida

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador—Alba Lorena Santos had just returned home from running errands when her headache began. She saw blood running down her legs. She was five months pregnant.

Santos told her daughter to call their neighbor, a relative by marriage, for help. She fainted shortly after. When she woke up, she remembers the neighbor telling her the baby—a boy—had died.

The next day the neighbor returned and said the police were there to ask some questions. Still sick and feverish, Santos said she was put into a police car and asked: “Why did you kill him? Not even dogs do that.”

Continued: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/24/abortion-bans-popular-el-salvador-latin-america/

Historic moment’ as El Salvador abortion case fuels hopes for expanded access across Latin America

Human rights court hears seriously ill woman denied procedure as advocates call for change in region with world’s most restrictive abortion laws

Julia Zulver in San Salvador
Fri 24 Mar 2023

Human rights activists in Latin America hope that a historic court hearing over the case of a Salvadoran woman who was denied an abortion despite her high-risk pregnancy could open the way for El Salvador to decriminalize abortions – and set an important precedent across the region.

The inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) this week considered the historic case of the woman, known as Beatriz, who was prohibited from having an abortion in 2013, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus she was carrying would not have survived outside the uterus.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/mar/24/historic-moment-as-el-salvador-abortion-case-fuels-hopes-for-expanded-access-across-latin-america

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

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

10.01.2023

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News

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Manuela

Morena Herrera

National Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion

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

Killed by abortion laws: five women whose stories we must never forget

As the US supreme court threatens to undo 49 years of access to safe and legal terminations, five women who died because of bans on abortion stand as warnings of what is at stake globally

Joe Parkin Daniels, Sarah Johnson, Weronika Strzyżyńska, Kaamil Ahmed and Mercy Kahenda
Sat 7 May 2022

[Stories about:]
Savita Halappanavar, Ireland
Olga Reyes, Nicaragua
‘Izabela’, Poland
‘Manuela’, El Salvador
‘Mildred’, Kenya

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/may/07/killed-by-abortion-laws-five-women-whose-stories-we-must-never-forget

Inside the fight against criminalisation of abortion in El Salvador

My new film documents how more than 50 Salvadoran women serving lengthy prison terms have been set free by feminist activism

Mariana Carbajal
21 March 2022

“I was
unconscious. When I woke up and saw the police were there, they were
handcuffing me... I didn't even understand... I only know that they just beat
me, treated me very badly, and at the end when I asked what was happening, they
told me I had killed my daughter and would be 50, 60 years in jail for the
crime I had committed.”

With these words, Teodora Vázquez explains the circumstances of her detention,
after giving birth a stillborn child in 2007. She was convicted of ‘aggravated
homicide’, sentenced to 30 years, and released in 2018 after a long legal
battle.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/inside-the-fight-against-criminalisation-of-abortion-in-el-salvador/

El Salvador woman punished under strict abortion law freed after 10 years

‘Elsy’ was sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide over miscarriage and is fifth such woman to be released since December

AP in San Salvador
Wed 9 Feb 2022

El Salvador has released another woman imprisoned for aggravated homicide who after suffering an obstetric emergency was accused of aborting her pregnancy in a country where abortion under any circumstances is banned.

The woman, who activists helping her identified only as Elsy, had served more than a decade of a 30-year sentence. She was the fifth woman released before completion of her sentence since late December of last year.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/09/el-salvador-woman-freed-abortion-law-10-years

09.02.2022

Featured

News

30-year jail sentence for miscarriage

aggravated homicide

Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion

imprisoning women for miscarriage

jailing women for miscarriage

Manuela

Morena Herrera

obstetric emergencies

Latin American Abortion Laws Hurt Health Care and the Economy—a Lesson for a Post-Roe U.S.

A region with some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws has started to tentatively move in the opposite direction

By Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
on January 4, 2022

As the U.S. braces for the possible rollback of abortion rights later this year, seismic shifts are happening south of the border. A series of recent legal and legislative decisions has begun to loosen restrictions in Latin America, a region with some of the world’s harshest antiabortion laws. And they could chart a path toward reform for governments that still advocate for the procedure to remain illegal. The health and economic consequences of keeping longtime bans in place may provide cautionary lessons for the U.S. as a Supreme Court decision to scrap Roe v. Wade appears to be imminent.

El Salvador has stood out for its aggressive pursuit of pregnant people who seek an abortion or have a miscarriage. Since 1998 the country has upheld a total ban on abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and high-risk pregnancy. As a result, about 181 women were prosecuted between 2000 and 2019 for getting an abortion or suffering an obstetric emergency, according to data compiled by a human rights group.

Continued: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/latin-american-abortion-laws-hurt-health-care-and-the-economy-a-lesson-for-a-post-roe-u-s/

04.01.2022