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

Featured

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

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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

Caitlin Knowles Myers

Carmen Martínez López

Center for Reproductive Rights

Center for the Study of State and Society

Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion in El Salvador

Damian Clarke

Global Gag Rule

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

jailing women for abortion

jailing women for miscarriage

obstetric complications

restrictive abortion laws

Roe v. Wade

self-managed abortion

total abortion ban

Veronica Cruz

Yana van der Meulen Rodgers

2021: Changes in abortion laws worldwide

Poland has virtually banned abortion, and the United States is also looking at tightening restrictions. But other countries, like Thailand and Benin, have started to loosen their restrictive measures. An overview.

29.12.2021
Ines Eisele

Access to abortion has become easier over the decades, according to Leah Hoctor, the senior regional director for Europe at the Center for Reproductive Rights. She said that, with some exceptions, the global trend clearly points at liberalization. Several countries saw developments on the controversial issue over the last year.

Mexico: Penalizing abortion ruled unconstitutional
In September, the Supreme Court in Mexico, Latin America's second most populous country, declared an absolute ban on abortion unconstitutional. The right of women to reproductive self-determination is to be valued more highly than the protection of the fetus, the court said. With the ruling, the judges overturned an abortion ban in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/2021-changes-in-abortion-laws-worldwide/a-60280568

El Salvador frees three women convicted of abortions

Abortion rights groups say President Nayib Bukele’s government has freed three Salvadoran women who were sentenced to 30 years in prison under the nation’s strict anti-abortion laws after suffering obstetric emergencies

By The Associated Press
25 December 2021

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- President Nayib Bukele's government has freed
three Salvadoran women who were sentenced to 30 years in prison under the
nation's strict anti-abortion laws after suffering obstetric emergencies,
according to abortion rights groups.

Morena Herrera of the Citizen's Group for the Depenalization of Abortion said
late Friday that the group was told one woman would be set free at presidential
order, but when they went to the prison to greet her, three were released.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/el-salvador-frees-women-convicted-abortions-81938352

Abortion rights: U.S. restrictions buck the global trend in 2021

Anastasia Moloney, Thomson Reuters Foundation
Dec 13, 2021

BOGOTA – A record number of U.S. states have sought to restrict access to abortion this year, but countries including Argentina, Mexico and Thailand have moved in the opposite direction – easing their strict laws on the procedure.

In the United States, 106 abortion restrictions were enacted across 19 states in 2021, according to reproductive health research organization the Guttmacher Institute.

Continued: https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/crime-pmn/abortion-rights-u-s-restrictions-buck-the-global-trend-in-2021

13.12.2021

Inter-American Court of Human Rights

In a case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, European groups supported criminalising women who had obstetric emergencies

Diana Cariboni and Tatev Hovhannisyan
3 December 2021

European right-wing groups backed the El Salvador government over the imprisonment and death of a woman for having a miscarriage. But they lost.

One of the groups was the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), a branch of the ultra-conservative American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), led by Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/europe-us-right-groups-elsalvador-criminalising-abortion/

05.12.2021