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Abortion in El Salvador prohibits women for spontaneous and stillborn abortions – now a woman’s family seeks international justice
Members of a Salvadoran feminist group attend a virtual hearing on March 10 on El Salvador’s abortion laws by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Marvin Recinos / AFP, via Getty Images El Salvador, completely prohibits abortion, even in circumstances of rape or incest, with sentences ranging from two to 50 years. The ban on abortion is so widely applied that even women who suffer abortions and stillbirths can be prosecuted for murder. Now, an international court will decide for the first time whether these laws violate the human rights of Salvadoran women. On March 10 and 11, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – a regional court of the Organization of American States created to try alleged human rights violations in member countries – heard arguments in the Manuela and Família v. El Salvador, about a 33- two year old mother of two, who died stillborn after a fall at her home in rural El Salvador in 2008. Manuela – whose real name is not used to protect her family’s identity – was rushed to the hospital after losing consciousness and bleeding. Although she said she did not know about the pregnancy, hospital officials accused Manuela of intentionally inducing an abortion and called the police. She was handcuffed to the hospital bed, interrogated by doctors and police and accused of qualified homicide. In 2008, Manuela was sentenced and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Later that year, her family’s lawyers started the legal process that ended in court this month. The claim: that a stillborn’s criminal prosecution is a violation of human rights. Dangerous laws El Salvador is one of three countries in Central America and 24 worldwide with a total ban on abortion. Obtaining an abortion is a crime, and obstetric emergencies that result in spontaneous or stillbirth abortions are regularly charged with felony homicide. Medical professionals involved in having an abortion can face six to 12 years in prison and may be prevented from practicing medicine. Family members who “support a woman” to have an abortion can be punished with a prison sentence of two to five years. Research in Latin America and around the world shows that abortion bans do not prevent women from terminating an unwanted or life-threatening pregnancy. Instead, they cause women to seek illegal and possibly dangerous abortions, and can lead hospitals to deny patients life-saving reproductive health care. Between 2000 and 2017, Latin American countries that prohibit abortion in all circumstances recorded a combined average of 151 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with about 68 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in other countries. These laws also cause women to be prosecuted for reproductive decisions and health emergencies. Hundreds of Salvadoran women have been charged with aggravated abortion or homicide in the past 25 years. According to the 1997 penal code, the crime of abortion carries a prison sentence of two to eight years; aggravated homicide, 30 to 50 years. Teodora Vasquez spent 10 years in prison after a miscarriage in El Salvador. She explored the plight of women under the draconian abortion laws in a 2019 documentary. Marvin Recinos / AFP via Getty Images A few years ago, we examined two of these cases in El Salvador: the lawsuits of Evelyn Hernandez and “Diana”, both accused Of qualified homicide based on apparent stillbirths. Our expert analysis, conducted at the request of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, found extensive human rights violations in both cases, including gender-based discrimination, violations of the right to health and undue transfer of the burden of proof to women defendants. El Salvador guarantees all of these rights in binding international treaties. We found that the authorities raped them when suing Hernandez and Diana. Rights violations Based on these findings, we filed a “friend of the court” petition in the case of Manuela, which is very similar to the cases we studied. We advise the Inter-American Court to order El Salvador to overturn the sentence against Manuela and reform its criminal law to comply with the American Convention on Human Rights. At the March 10 hearing in Manuela e Família v. El Salvador, held virtually because of COVID-19, Manuela’s lawyers said that their client’s charge had violated several rights protected by Salvadoran and international law. The charge of a stillborn child constituted gender-based discrimination, denied Manuela her right to health and violated the right to a life with dignity and integrity, her lawyers argued. The government also denied her the right to due process, the right to protection from inhuman treatment and the right to privacy, the lawyers said. If the seven judges of the court decide in favor of Manuela, they can order El Salvador to annul his wrongful conviction and reform his penal code. This could mean decriminalizing abortion, at least in mitigating circumstances like rape or incest, as several Latin American countries have done in recent years. The reform may also aim to stop the flow of unfair convictions for qualified homicide against women who experience an obstetric emergency. The court’s decision is expected to be handed down in the coming months. Salvadoran women demand legal abortion on March 6, 2020, in San Salvador, El Salvador. Camilo Freedman / APHOTOGRAFIA / Getty Images Power of the court Although the Inter-American Court has limited the power to enforce its sentences, El Salvador is legally obliged to comply with its decisions and has done so in the past, including obeying orders to deal with its reproductive laws of health. In 2013, the court ordered El Salvador to preserve the life and health of “Beatriz”, a woman who suffered from lupus and kidney disease and sought to have an abortion because she was pregnant with an unviable fetus. The Salvadoran Supreme Court rejected Beatriz’s request to terminate her pregnancy to save her life. But when the Inter-American Court disagreed, ruling that Beatriz’s right to life required the state to act, El Salvador complied. On June 3, 2013, “Beatriz” underwent a cesarean section that saved her life. The current president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, said in a 2018 presidential debate that he is in favor of legalizing abortion when pregnancy threatens the mother’s life and said he was “totally against” the criminalization of women who have abortions. “If a poor woman has a miscarriage, she is immediately suspected of having an abortion,” he said. “We cannot take blame when what a woman needs is immediate assistance.” [Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.] Her government has done nothing to avoid convictions for spontaneous abortion or to ease the ban on abortion, despite pressure from feminists and human rights groups. But Bukele is unlikely to disregard a decision by the Inter-American Court. Whatever the trial in Manuela’s case, it will be too late for the plaintiff and her family: Manuela died of cancer in prison in 2010. If her conviction is overturned, as requested, justice will be served posthumously. This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Juliet S. Sorensen, Northwestern University; Alexandra Tarzikhan, Northwestern University, and Meredith Heim, Northwestern University. Read more: In Latin America, is there a link between abortion rights and democracy? Abortions increase worldwide when the U.S. cuts funding for women’s health clinics, the study concluded. organization that would benefit from this article and did not disclose relevant affiliations other than its academic nomination.