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Women jailed under El Salvador's abortion ban are now fighting to end it
A group of women who spent years in prison are now supporting others persecuted under El Salvador’s draconian laws
22 May 2023, 10.55am
Women in El Salvador who were imprisoned for years after suffering miscarriages, stillbirths and other complications are now fighting for the freedom of other women persecuted like them.
Teodora Vásquez spent ten years and seven months behind bars after suffering an obstetric emergency in 2007. She was 22, and nine months pregnant, when she suddenly felt labour pains while working as cleaner in a school. She only had time to call an ambulance before she collapsed. When she woke up, the baby was dead and the doctors had denounced her. She was sentenced to 30 years for murder.
El Salvador has some of the world’s harshest anti-abortion laws. Not only is abortion prohibited in all circumstances, including in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the pregnant person is at risk, it is also severely punished – with up to eight years in prison.
But women who suffer an obstetric complication, such as a miscarriage or stillbirth, are punished even more harshly: they can be prosecuted for murder or aggravated murder and face up to 50 years inside. Hundreds of women, most of them poor, have been sentenced to long prison terms.
More:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/el-salvador-women-abortion-obstetric-problems-prison-fight/
