El Salvador Perspectives

Ten years ago  doctors in El Salvador sought court permission for a young woman named Beatriz to have a therapeutic abortion, one to preserve her life and health.  Doctors believed Beatriz life was in danger if she carried her non-viable fetus to term, but Salvadoran courts up to the Supreme Judicial Court, declined to vary from the absolute ban on abortion in Salvadoran law.  El Salvador has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world. El Salvador outlaws abortion for any reason. There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother. Moreover, El Salvador arrests and imprisons women who have abortions, sometime charging them with murder and sending them to prison for thirty years. Noor Mahtani, writing in El Pais , describes Beatriz' case: Beatriz was just 21 years old, with a nine-month-old son and many financial difficulties, when she was diagnosed with lupus. A year later, in March 2013, she found out she was pregnant for the ...

As abortion and reproductive rights issues roil the legal landscape in the US, El Salvador is a county where abortion rights are nonexistent.  El Salvador outlaws abortion in all situations and punishes not just abortion providers, but pregnant women, with some of the most draconian penalties in the world. As Human Rigts Watch reported: Abortion is a crime in El Salvador, with no exceptions – even in cases of rape or incest, where the pregnancy endangers the pregnant woman’s life or health, or in cases of severe fetal impairment. Anyone who has an abortion, and the medical providers who perform or induce them, can face drastic prison sentences. Women have been convicted of murder after being accused of having had an abortion, sometimes with prison terms for up to 40 years. For some of these women, having a miscarriage or stillbirth was used as evidence to convict them.  A too common scenario involves a mother who suffers a late term miscarriage.  At the hospital, rathe...

For months now, a special committee in El Salvador led by vice president Felix Ulloa has been working on drafting a set of reforms to the country's constitution.   The meetings have been held behind closed doors, and although some details had been leaking out, much was unknown about what would be proposed.  The completed draft of the proposed reforms to the constitution are now public.  The changes are sweeping, with revisions, deletions or replacements of some 215 articles of the 274-article constitution.   While there is much to study in the proposal, and I do not purport to have had the chance to review the document fully, at this point I can say that many changes are remarkably progressive.   If the proposal were to be adopted and the courts and government were to fully implement and respect the rights created by this document, it would be a positive step forward for the country. (That's a big "if"). (For those wishing to study the proposed re...

A young woman in El Salvador sits in a prison cell after being repeatedly raped by her elderly step father and giving birth to his baby.   It is an emblematic case of El Salvador's war on poor women when it comes to reproductive health. Nina Lakahani writing in The Guardian  describes the case: In a case that highlights the rigidity of the country’s abortion laws, Imelda Cortez, 20, from an impoverished rural family in San Miguel, has been in custody since April 2017 after giving birth to a baby girl fathered by her abusive elderly stepfather.  Cortez was rushed to hospital after her mother discovered her in severe pain and bleeding heavily. The emergency room doctor suspected an abortion and called the police. Officers found the baby healthy and alive.  Cortez had been abused by her 70-year-old stepfather since she was 12 years old and said she had no idea she was pregnant. The baby survived, but Cortez was charged with attempted murder, denied bail and...

Some headlines from El Salvador this week: Judge orders reopening of Jesuit massacre case .    A judge has ruled that a criminal case in an El Salvador court should proceed to determine criminal responsibility for those who ordered the 1989 killing of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.   The country's attorney general must now file new charges in a case which will involve former president Alfredo Cristiani and the military high command from 1989. "Dollarization" won't be reversed .    The Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court rejected a petition to overthrow the country's 2001 conversion of its national currency from the colón to the US dollar.  The abandonment of El Salvador's own currency seventeen years ago continues to be unpopular among much of the population. Martinez v. Martinez in FMLN internal elections .  Hugo Martinez, El Salvador's foreign minister, has announced that he will compete agains...

The InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights issued a report today on its working visit to El Salvador in November 2017.   The IACHR's report has a particular focus on the human rights of women and girls.   The press release announcing the report summarizes its findings: The IACHR observes that the State of El Salvador has made some progress in the areas of citizen security and the rights of women and other groups at special risk, such as the “Safe El Salvador Plan” or the Ciudad Mujer (“Women’s City”) program. At the same time, the IACHR expresses its deep concern about violations of human rights stemming from citizen insecurity, the lack of universal access to basic services, and the lack of budgetary resources to ensure the proper functioning and development of human rights policies. With regard to the rights of women and girls, the IACHR notes the prevalence of violence and discrimination against them, which is clearly reflected in the total criminalization ...

El Salvador's draconian abortion laws which admit of no exceptions, and the series of cases where women who miscarried were prosecuted for homicide, have been often discussed on this blog.   An opinion piece in the LA Times, titled The real reason El Salvador jails women for stillbirths? It's called 'moral panic, ' offers some perspective on this harsh treatment of traumatized women: According to [South African sociologist Stanley] Cohen’s theory, the media plays a crucial role in whipping up moral panic. In El Salvador, mainstream media outlets went into overdrive to foment the frenzy over abortion, calling on the state to do more to capture homicidal mothers and using the words “abortion” and “homicide” interchangeably. One newspaper article reported that “the number of newborns being thrown into latrines, trash receptacles, or vacant lots by their own mothers is alarming.” Often, such articles did not cite a single case to support their claims, yet offered provocat...

For the past week, the global media have reported the case of Evelyn Beatriz Hernández Cruz, a teenager condemned to jail for thirty years for aggravated homicide after losing her baby when she was 8 months pregnant.    Most of the English language reporting is written for headlines and misses some of the complexities of the story.    The BBC probably has the best summary in English: In April last year, Ms Hernandez gave birth in the latrine of her home in a small rural community. She lost consciousness after losing large amounts of blood.  When her mother took her to hospital, leaving the baby's remains behind, Ms Hernandez was detained on suspicion of procuring an abortion.  Eleven days later she had an initial court hearing and she has been in custody since. Her charge was changed to aggravated homicide when no evidence was found of her having had an abortion.  Although she was in the third trimester, Ms Hernandez said she had confused t...

El Salvador outlaws abortion in all situations and punishes not just abortion providers, but pregnant women, with some of the most draconian penalties in the world.   As Human Rigts Watch reported: Abortion is a crime in El Salvador, with no exceptions – even in cases of rape or incest, where the pregnancy endangers the pregnant woman’s life or health, or in cases of severe fetal impairment. Anyone who has an abortion, and the medical providers who perform or induce them, can face drastic prison sentences. Women have been convicted of murder after being accused of having had an abortion, sometimes with prison terms for up to 40 years. For some of these women, having a miscarriage or stillbirth was used as evidence to convict them. The quest to make these laws more humane continues. There has been some success in getting a few women freed who had been imprisoned on homicide charges after being suspected of having an abortion.    One such woman was Sonia Tábora w...

Since 1998, El Salvador has had an absolute ban on all abortions without exceptions, and has prosecuted women suspected of having abortions.   At least 628 women have been imprisoned since the law was passed.  It is a system which disproportionately impacts impoverished and poorly educated women . In February 2014, the US-based  Center for Reproductive Rights  and the Salvadoran  Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto Terapéutico, Ético y Eugenésico  produced a detailed report titled  Marginalized, Persecuted, and Imprisoned: The Effects of El Salvador’s Total Criminalization of Abortion .   The study looked at the criminal prosecutions of women for abortion in El Salvador including individual case studies and the facts surrounding 129 separate prosecutions. The data indicates that a majority of the 129 women were impoverished. They were women who had, throughout their lives, been excluded from educational opportunities, acc...

PBS ran a news story this week describing El Salvador's severe anti-abortion law under which women suspected of having abortions can be prosecuted for aggravated homicide. PBS highlights the cases of several women who have been prosecuted, and sentenced to as many as 30 years in prison. You can watch the video or read a transcript at this link .

The BBC has a new article on its website titled El Salvador: Where women may be jailed for miscarrying .  The article highlights the tragic consequences and discriminatory application of El Salvador's absolute ban on abortion with no exceptions: El Salvador is one of five countries with a total ban on abortion, along with Nicaragua, Chile, Honduras and Dominican Republic. Since 1998, the law has allowed no exceptions - even if a woman is raped, her life is at risk or the foetus is severely deformed.  More than 200 women were reported to the police between 2000 and 2011, of whom 129 were prosecuted and 49 convicted - 26 for murder (with sentences of 12 to 35 years) and 23 for abortion, according to research by Citizens' Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion. Seven more have been convicted since 2012.  The study underlines that these women are overwhelmingly poor, unmarried and poorly educated - and they are usually denounced by public hospital staff. Not a...

El Salvador has one of the strictest abortion laws in the world, allowing no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother.   Mothers can be, and are, sent to prison for as many as 30 years for having an abortion.  El Salvador's Supreme Court refused yesterday to vary from that strict law in the case of Beatriz,  a woman who needs to terminate her pregnancy to save her own life.   But her life may still be saved, as this AP report in the Miami Herald describes:    A seriously ill Salvadoran woman whose struggle to get a medical abortion drew international attention received permission on Thursday to end the troubled pregnancy with a cesarean section.  El Salvador's Health Minister on Thursday approved the C-section for the 22-year-old woman suffering from kidney failure and lupus, a day after the Supreme Court ruled that she could not have an abortion despite her lawyers' appeal that the pregnancy was life-threatening.  Ultrasoun...

The case of a young woman in El Salvador , known only as Beatriz, drags on without resolution, and has drawn increasing international attention.   Doctors say that she needs a therapeutic abortion to save her life, but El Salvador's absolute anti-abortion law prohibits it.  Appeals to El Salvador's Supreme Court have produced no results. You can read the latest developments at the Guardian and from al Jazeera .

El Salvador has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world.   El Salvador outlaws abortion for any reason.   There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother.   Moreover, El Salvador arrests and imprisons women who have abortions, sometime charging them with murder and sending them to prison for thirty years. The human consequences of that law are in abundantly clear today in a single case.   The Huffington Post has this article on a case highlighted by Amnesty International: A critically ill young woman in El Salvador may have to decide between jail and a life-saving abortion, according to a new report from Amnesty International.  The 22-year-old woman, identified only as Beatriz, is four-and-a-half months pregnant but could die if she doesn't get an abortion , per the report.  Beatriz has been diagnosed with several illnesses, including lupus and kidney disease, Amnesty wrote, and her baby is missing ...

El Salvador outlaws abortion for any reason.   There are no exceptions for rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother.   Moreover, El Salvador arrests and imprisons women who have abortions, sometime charging them with murder and sending them to prison for thirty years. In a male dominated country with a highly flawed judicial system, tragedy follows.   Consider the case of Sonia Tábora as described on the blog of the Europena Pro-Choice Network : Sonia was born in Sacacoyo, a village where 40 per cent of the population live in poverty. She experienced injustice at 18 when the man who had raped her was acquitted. And Sonia also had to survive a common experience for poor women in Central America of being abandoned by her partner after becoming pregnant.  Sonia hid her pregnancy from her employers for fear of losing her job as a maid. In February 2005, during a visit to her hometown when she was seven months pregnant, she unexpectedly gave birth ...

In April, a New York Times Magazine cover story focused on the criminalization of abortion in El Salvador. The article by writer Jack Hitt, titled " Pro-Life Nation ", focused on the situation in El Salvador where there are no exceptions where abortion is legal and where women may be prosecuted for having abortions. The article asserted that women had been sentenced to long prision terms for having an abortion. "Pro-Life Nation" received a great deal of publicity when it was published. I wrote about the Times piece on this blog on April 9. The Public Editor for the New York Times, responding to criticisms of the article, has disclosed today that Hitt may have gotten wrong some basic facts in the story: The cover story on abortion in El Salvador in The New York Times Magazine on April 9 contained prominent references to an attention-grabbing fact. “A few” women, the first paragraph indicated, were serving 30-year jail terms for having had abortions. That ref...

A variety of issues have been discussed in the Salvadoran blogosphere in past weeks. Much discussion went to Jack Hitt's article in the April 9, 2006 Sunday New York Times Magazine titled Pro-Life Nation . In the article, Hitt describes El Salvador's complete criminalization of abortion which includes the prosecution and imprisonment of women who have abortions, and there are no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother. The article produced a spirited debate in comments on Tim's El Salvador Blog where some celebrated the "pro-life" policy of the government and others condemned the idea that a government which was not addressing poverty and childhood diseases could be considered as pro-life. Meanwhile numerous liberal blogs commented on Pro-Life Nation by forecasting that it was the future of abortion law in the US if conservative groups had their way. Blog posts such as I have seen the future and it is El Salvador on the Carpetbagger Repo...

The cover story of the New York Times Sunday Magazine this week is titled Pro-Life Nation and looks at the criminalization of abortion in El Salvador: There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus -- the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal. That unusual kind of criminal is the woman who has an abortion. The article includes interviews with women who have had illegal abortions, the doctors who report them to authorities, the investigators who gather evidence of the crime, and the magistrates who decide to prosecute and sometimes send those women to prison. The article also provides some hist...