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When Lilian* became pregnant for the second time, she had an almost two-year-old daughter, a family that supported her, and a job as a home-based cosmetics professional. On December 19, 2015, she entered the delivery room at the San Juan de Dios National Hospital, in Santa Ana, in the eastern part of El Salvador, and had to be sedated after a torn uterus; a complication during childbirth that caused the death of her baby. Three days after the incident, still dazed by the sedatives, she was informed by the police – who were waiting for her inside the hospital – that she was being accused of abandoning and neglecting her daughters. Days later, they reclassified her crime: they accused her of aggravated homicide and asked for 30 years in prison, of which she served seven. This Wednesday she speaks to the press for the first time since three months ago a judge annulled her sentence for “the violation of procedural guarantees” in her case. “I'm enjoying raising my daughter again,” she says with a shy smile. “She is being easier than she imagined.”
But freedom is bittersweet. No one can repair those seven years that were taken from him and that he spent in the Ilopango women's prison, in the center of the country. “I felt very alone, I saw my daughter only twice: once when she was three and the next when she was five years old. I didn't want him to see me there. In prison I spent some horrible, tedious and difficult years,” she says, still not understanding why they deprived her of her freedom. Her daughter, now 11 years old, has told her that she knows that “when she grows up” she will tell him “why he left her alone with her grandparents for so long.” The freedom of this Salvadoran woman is the end of a long litigation process initiated in 2014 by the Citizens' Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion. And one more step towards the decriminalization of abortion in the most restrictive country on the continent in terms of sexual and reproductive rights.
The group, which learned of the first case of criminalization of women victims of obstetric emergencies in 2006, launched a campaign known as “freedom for 17”, with the aim of releasing women whom the State and society branded as “ child killer.” Shortly after, this number became small and the campaign was renamed “17 and more.” Although the stories of each one are very different, the profile of these women was practically identical: young people with limited resources, low education and with an ex officio defense that she did not do enough. “They are victims of the serious gender biases in the country and the cruelty of the prosecutor's offices,” says Angélica Rivas, a lawyer for the group. “They went to jail because our judicial system is unfair and perverse against women.” Lilian is the last of the 17 or so to be released.
Rivas wonders during the press conference what would have happened if no one had reviewed their cases. Lilian would have spent another 13 years in prison. Rosita, another 37. And Teodora Vásquez would have been released in 2028. But in the last decade, 73 women deprived of liberty and with sentences of between 25 and 50 years in prison have been released. To date, there are no longer women imprisoned for obstetric emergencies, but there are 11 cases that are being prosecuted as the crime of abortion. “We are all out now, we just hope that the laws can change in El Salvador, so that more women do not go to prison for crimes they did not commit,” says Vásquez by phone, who leads the organization Mujeres Libres and which helps with reintegration. in the society of these victims of the system. “Unfortunately, we not only experience the sentence of a judge, but also the social sentence that remains with us for life. It is a life sentence and we have to be part of the change,” she says. For Morena Herrera, president of the Citizens' Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, it is important to talk about the double stigma of imprisoned women: “This is an extremely punitive country in which these women who leave prison suffer the stigma of having been deprived of liberty and having been 'murderous mothers', as they call them. With this they face the reconstruction of their life project. That is why the State's recognition that its criminalization was a mistake is important.”
The judge who annulled Lilian's sentence recognized the violation of procedural guarantees and due process in Lilian's case, which, according to the lawyers who handled her case, was plagued by gender stereotypes. She was acquitted because both she and her newborn daughter (who died after 72 hours) were in a hospital when the events occurred. Her death was the result of medical negligence and not an abortion. Much less a homicide. After years of litigation, Lilian was released from prison on November 1, 2023. “I am grateful that they never left me alone,” she says now in front of other women who were also deprived of liberty and who today hold sunflowers twisted in green scarves.
The court's decision comes in a crucial year regarding sexual and reproductive rights in the Central American country. Although abortion is prohibited in five countries in the region, Nicaragua, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and El Salvador, the latter is where the rates of criminalization and persecution are the highest on the continent. In El Salvador, more and more women are harassed for wanting to make decisions about their bodies. Aborting, voluntarily or involuntarily, is punishable by up to 12 years in prison. And the sentences reach up to 50 when they are criminalized for aggravated homicides, as happened with Lilian.
However, more and more sentences from the Inter-American justice system are challenging the absolute criminalization of abortion. In 2023, a historic hearing was held on this matter: the case of Beatriz vs. El Salvador. It is the story of a woman with lupus who the State did not allow her to abort even though the fetus was anencephalic, a disease incompatible with life, and which put the woman's life at risk. Feminist organizations expect a sentence at the end of 2024 in favor of this young woman who died in 2017 at just 25 years old. A favorable ruling could crack the absolute penalty and open the hand to three causes: when the mother's life is in danger, when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or when the fetus develops a disease incompatible with life. It could also be the State's opportunity to make amends to Beatriz's family, who has been waiting for years.
The ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IAC Court) will be the first in direct matters of absolute criminalization and would lay clear foundations in a continent that does not guarantee women's rights. According to Herrera, “they have a lot of hope in the ruling, for reparation and non-repetition of these violations of their rights.” Although she predicts that El Salvador will delay or not accept the measures, she remembers that what the Inter-American Court dictates is mandatory. “They will not be able to evade their responsibility, the sentence will bring us closer to the right to decide about our bodies.”
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pregnancy presents complications in 20% of cases. For Salvadoran gynecologist Sandra Carolina Mena, forcing women to carry non-viable fetuses to term is forcing them to “be born in distress” and die. However, in a country that constitutionally grants life (and rights) to fetuses from conception, fighting for sexual and reproductive health is a titanic feat. While she continues the pulse, Lilian will sleep with her daughter today. “I haven't started looking for a job yet, I'm in a moment of pause, assimilating everything and raising her,” she says excitedly. “But I want to go back to study and work again, I want a life like before.”
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