A 12-year-old raped girl has no right to have an abortion. A swept woman spends ten years in prison for miscarriage. This is the reality in El Salvador – the country with some of the harshest abortion laws in the world, writes German wave.
Ten years and seven months in prison for miscarriage? In El Salvador, this is a reality: last week, Salvadoran Elsie was finally released. Her story sounds rather depressing.
“I don’t have a uterus and she’s pregnant, but we’re here.”
During her pregnancy, the then 28-year-old woman worked as a domestic helper. When she swept, she sought help, but was instead imprisoned for killing an unborn child. Her sentence: 30 years in prison.
There are no exceptions – neither for minors nor for raped
According to human rights activists, 181 women have been tried in El Salvador for spontaneous abortions in the last two decades. Anti-abortion laws in this country are extremely harsh. Women with problematic pregnancies that end in miscarriage are almost automatically suspected of having a miscarriage. They are accused of aggravated murder, which is punishable by 30 years in prison.
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That’s exactly what happened to Elsie. “She suffered a great misfortune but was slandered. The trial was very unfair, with many violations and without respect for the rights of the accused,” said Morena Herrera, one of Salvador’s most famous women’s rights advocates. for many years she struggled with all sorts of legal means to reduce the unjust sentence. Herrera explains that women like Elsie are doubly punished: they are both slandered in public and imprisoned. And in cases where for medical reasons it is necessary to terminate the pregnancy in order not to endanger the mother, the hospital staff often postpones until the last, so as not to take punishment. And this can be fatal for the pregnant woman, says the human rights activist. She adds something very important: a total ban on abortions in El Salvador is forcing many women to look for other, illegal and dangerous ways to terminate their pregnancies.
It turns out that men play a big role in miscarriages
At the same time, in El Salvador, sexual violence and rape of minors are part of everyday life. “But even for juvenile victims of rape, the law is no exception. We are currently caring for a 12-year-old blind girl who was raped, but now has to take the child away, because that is the law,” Morena Herrera told the State Duma. .
International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have been calling for a public debate on the issue in El Salvador for years to help thousands of women. “We lack sexual education to reduce violence against women. We also lack a number of measures to combat sexual violence and avoid unwanted pregnancies,” said Keiki Caceres, another Salvadoran human rights activist, in an interview with the State Security.
El Salvador and “the coolest dictator in the world”
But legislative changes are not in sight – despite President Naib Bukele’s desire to present himself to the world as a progressive and unconventional politician who even introduced the cryptocurrency bitcoin as the second official alongside the US dollar. On social media, he coquettishly claimed the title of “CEO of El Salvador”, and in response to criticism of his authoritarian rule, even boasted that he was “the coolest dictator in the world.”
“It’s not cool at all,” Keiki Cáceres said. “He is extremely conservative and extremely religious. He regularly violates the principle of separation of powers and the separation of church and state,” the human rights activist said. And he recalls an interview in which the president equated abortion with genocide.
Despite all this, Morena Herrera is looking forward with optimism. The 62-year-old mother of four believes she will change soon. Her hopes are linked to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which recently convicted El Salvador of the death of a woman. In 2008, the woman was sentenced for miscarriage to 30 years in prison and died behind bars three years later. Another such verdict could force Bukele’s government to soften its draconian anti-abortion laws, Herrera hopes.
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