Will El Salvador’s Total Abortion Ban Be a Model for the U.S.? Maria Hinojosa Investigates

October 02, 2025
Video: 59 minutes

A new investigation by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Maria Hinojosa looks at reproductive rights in El Salvador, which has one of the world’s most restrictive anti-abortion laws and has imprisoned women who suffered obstetric emergencies like miscarriages or stillbirths.

While exact numbers are difficult to ascertain, one woman who spent time in prison in El Salvador for a miscarriage estimated “that 90% of the women who are in prison in El Salvador are in prison for this,” says Hinojosa.

Hinojosa also cautions that a version of El Salvador’s law could make its way to the United States as states pass more abortion bans following the end of Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/2/maria_hinojosa

02.10.2025

Film, Art, Books

Videos/Images

anti-choice misogyny

jailing women for abortion

jailing women for miscarriage

El Salvador – From Pregnancy to Murder Charge: Living Under a Total Abortion Ban

By Monica Morales-Garcia and Maria Hinojosa
Sep 26, 2025

On a hot San Salvador day, Teodora Vázquez called 911 for an ambulance. She was nine months pregnant, alone at work, and in labor. After multiple phone calls for help, no one arrived. With no medical care, she gave birth, fell unconscious, and began hemorrhaging in a bathroom stall. Shortly after, the police came. To her surprise, they weren’t there to help her, but placed her under arrest for what they decided was the abortion and murder of her newborn. Teodora would then be convicted of homicide and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Since 1997, El Salvador has had a no-exceptions ban on abortion. This means that there are no exceptions for women seeking an abortion after rape, incest, or when their life is in danger. Termination of pregnancy is never allowed; instead, it’s criminalized. Medical professionals can be incarcerated for up to 12 years for assisting or performing an abortion, and pregnant women have been sentenced to up to 50 years in prison for what the government has defined as an abortion and homicide.

Continued: https://www.latinousa.org/2025/09/26/pregnancymurdercharge/

26.09.2025

Interviews/Podcasts

30-year jail sentence for stillbirth

jailing women for abortion

Maria Hinojosa

Monica Morales-Garcia

prosecuting women for abortion

A Deafening Silence: The Inter-American Court’s Failure to Address Abortion in in Beatriz v El Salvador

24.07.25
Alicia Ely Yamin, Sabrina Ochoa

As clashes over sexual and reproductive rights are presently used in culture wars and lawfare, the recent decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Beatriz v. El Salvador is a missed opportunity to consolidate the Court’s jurisprudence on sexual and reproductive health and rights and defend the legitimacy of international human rights law. Beatriz was a young woman from the impoverished state of Usulután, El Salvador, who, after experiencing a high-risk pregnancy due to Lupus, found herself pregnant a second time. Despite medical consensus among fifteen doctors of the lack of fetal viability and the immediate harm to Beatriz, she was forced to wait in physical and mental anguish for months as various institutional and judicial entities deliberated on whether to allow her doctors to perform a therapeutic abortion.

Continued: https://opiniojuris.org/2025/07/24/a-deafening-silence-the-inter-american-courts-failure-to-address-abortion-in-in-beatriz-v-el-salvador/

El Salvador violated woman’s rights in high-stakes abortion case, court rules

By Reuters December 20, 2024

SAN JOSE/SAN SALVADOR - El Salvador violated a woman's rights after denying her an abortion in 2013 despite doctors' calls to terminate her high-risk pregnancy, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR)said on Friday.

The case of the woman, a domestic worker known as Beatriz, became a symbol of El Salvador's blanket ban on abortion, which punishes with prison time those who undergo the procedure, perform it or assist with it.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-violated-womans-rights-high-stakes-abortion-case-human-rights-court-2024-12-20/

20.12.2024

Beatriz v El Salvador: the abortion case that could set a precedent across Latin America

Activists targeted as US-linked hard-right campaigns sow disinformation ahead of inter-American court of human rights ruling on case of woman who was denied abortion in 2013

Sarah Johnson, The Guardian
Mon 2 Dec 2024

Earlier this year, Morena Herrera woke up to find that a video about her had been posted on social media. It claimed that the 64-year-old campaigner for abortion rights in El Salvador had “chased down” a young woman in hospital and “terrorised” her into seeking an abortion.

The young woman was Beatriz, who had been denied an abortion in 2013, even though she was seriously ill and the foetus would not have survived outside the uterus.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/dec/02/el-salvador-antiabortion-international-campaign-disinformation-hate-activists-laws-ban-human-rights

March in Costa Rica as [Anti-choice] Protesters Oppose Abortion Ruling in Latin America

Tico Times
November 10, 2024

Hundreds of Costa Ricans marched this Sunday in opposition to abortion and headed to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), where a case against El Salvador is being heard regarding a woman who was denied the right to terminate her pregnancy despite her life being at risk.

The protesters, mostly dressed in light blue and singing Christian hymns, marched a kilometer from a park to the Court’s headquarters in San José, which has been handling the “Beatriz vs. El Salvador” case since March of last year—the first case it has examined on abortion in Latin America.

Continued: https://ticotimes.net/2024/11/10/historic-march-in-costa-rica-as-protesters-oppose-abortion-ruling-in-latin-america

10.11.2024

News

Beatriz vs. El Salvador

IACHR

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

‘The hope of the country’: Reproductive health activist on El Salvador’s historic abortion case

October 29, 2024
By Tracy Glynn

Wendy Barrera Rivas from El Salvador was one of three youth activists touring eastern Canada this month. At every stop, she shares the story of Beatriz, who she calls “the hope of the country.”

Beatriz was a 21-year-old mother living with lupus and in extreme poverty in El Salvador when she became pregnant with a fetus that was developing without a skull and brain. Doctors advised her to end her pregnancy that was putting her life at risk. Due to a ban on abortion in El Salvador, Beatriz was unable to get an abortion. Her health suffered and tragically, in 2017, she died from injuries sustained in a road accident. She was 27.

Continued: https://www.healthcoalition.ca/youth-activists-tour-canada-to-talk-about-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights/

The Dark State Of Abortion Rights In El Salvador, And First Signs Of Light

Although the last Salvadorian woman imprisoned on charges linked to abortion was released in December, 11 similar cases are currently pending in the country. Human rights activists acknowledge the progress made, and the work that remains to be done to overturn strict anti-abortion laws.

Mariana Escobar Bernoske
March 09, 2024

BOGOTÁ — In December 2023, Lilian was the last Salvadoran woman to regain her freedom after spending seven years in prison for an obstetric emergency. In 2015, the courts found her guilty of "murdering" her unborn baby by planning an abortion, when in fact, a tear in her uterus had caused the death. Medics had to give her three blood transfusions to stabilize her.

El Salvador is one of Latin America's most restrictive states in terms of women's sexual and reproductive rights. Abortion is banned as the state considers persons to exist from the moment of conception, contrary to the advice of international human rights groups. Under this strict ban, women who have had pregnancy complications, miscarriages or prenatal deaths to be charged with premeditating abortion.

Continued: https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/abortion-righs-el-salvador

El Salvador, where a miscarriage can land you in jail

María Isabel Sánchez
Feb 16, 2024

Lilian was 20 when her newborn baby died of medical complications at a hospital in El Salvador, where abortion is a crime and even the suspicion of one can land a woman in jail.

Lilian was arrested and sentenced to 30 years in prison for "aggravated homicide" after her infant daughter passed away at a public hospital in Santa Ana in the country's west in November 2015.

Continued: https://www.kulr8.com/news/national/el-salvador-where-a-miscarriage-can-land-you-in-jail/article_d8216c25-f609-5b35-836b-ee0e1035e42a.html

16.02.2024

Commentary

aggravated homicide

Alba Lorena Rodríguez

Arturo Castellanos

Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion

Lilian in El Salvador

Welcome to El Salvador where a miscarriage sends you to jail

Tuesday, January 23, 2024
By Moraa Obiria, The Nation

What you need to know:
The country in Central America has laws tormenting women and girls with the harshest abortion laws under the sun.
Should a woman abort, regardless of circumstances, the law sends them to jail for between two to eight years.
A 19-year-old woman who miscarried after a rape ordeal was charged with aggravated homicide-intentional and premeditated killing of another person - and jailed for 30 years.

Continued: https://nation.africa/kenya/news/gender/welcome-to-el-salvador-where-a-miscarriage-sends-you-to-jail-4499792

23.01.2024