A young woman who suffered an obstetric emergency and gave birth in a latrine in her home was sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated homicide in El Salvadorinformed this Monday a feminist organization that will appeal the decision.
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The sentence against Lesly Ramírez was adopted on June 29 and was based “on mere gender prejudice,” the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Therapeutic, Ethical and Eugenic Abortion (Acdatee) explained in a statement.
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This 23-year-old woman is part of a large family in a situation of poverty dedicated to agriculture, with a house without water or electricity.
In June 2020, after going to the bathroom in a latrine in her home, she unknowingly went into rapid labor, expelling the unborn child.
As detailed by the Prosecutor’s Office at the time, it was a girl between 37 and 40 weeks’ gestation who was allegedly born alive and died hours later.
“I felt something come out of me, it was dark and I couldn’t see what I was expelling,” Ramírez said at the time.
She panicked and after the emergency she was hospitalized and received three blood transfusions. She was later arrested. Last week she was sentenced.
“Through an appeal we are going to request her freedom (…), she is the victim of an unfair sentence,” Morena Herrera, president of the group, told AFP.
In El Salvador, prosecutors and judges classify obstetric emergencies and cases of miscarriage as “aggravated homicide”, with sentences of up to 50 years.
#Sentence IA 50 years in prison was sentenced Lesly Lisbeth Ramírez, 23 years old, for Aggravated Homicide to the detriment of her newborn daughter.
The events occurred on June 17, 2020, inside a house in the El Volcán de San Miguel canton. pic.twitter.com/HjhcUee85P
– Attorney General of the Republic of El Salvador (@FGR_SV) June 29, 2022
This, despite the fact that the Salvadoran Penal Code since 1998 establishes sentences of up to 8 years for abortion, a practice prohibited in the Central American country in all cases.
This is “the first time in history that the maximum penalty (50 years) has been applied since
that abortion was absolutely criminalized,” said Acdatee.
Since 2009, 65 women convicted of health emergencies during pregnancy, most of them in precarious economic conditions, have been released with the support of Acdatee and other groups.
Last year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) found the State of El Salvador responsible for the case of Manuela, a Salvadoran woman
who died in 2010 in prison, serving a 30-year sentence for an out-of-hospital delivery classified as aggravated homicide.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from AFP
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