As debates around women's rights to their own bodies continue here in the US, one horrific story out of El Salvador is giving us a glimpse at what total abortion bans look like.
According to a reproductive rights group, a 28-year-old has been sentenced 30 years in prison after suffering a medical emergency that caused her to lose her unborn baby.
A judge found the woman, who is being identified only as "Esme," guilty of homicide.
The sentence is shocking, no matter what country you live in. But El Salvador has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world. President Nayib Bukele, the country's authoritarian president, has said that women should be forced to carry their pregnancies to term, even in the case of rape. He has called abortion "a great genocide."
While the length of the sentence is absolutely obscene, many Salvadoran women who found themselves in similar circumstances have been jailed. Women's rights groups in the country have been fighting back and, in some cases, have gotten women serving long sentences — sometimes for decades — released. Still, it seems that a stunning example was just made out of Esme, who is the first to woman to be sentenced for such a "crime" in seven years.
Esme's life changed after she sought medical attention in October 2019 and was reported to the police by hospital employees. She would spend the next two years in pretrial detention before being released in October 2021. Just this week, she appeared in court, and a judge found her guilty of murder.
Morena Herrera, president of Inter-American Court of Human Rights, told Vice, “This sentence is a blow to our efforts to release women unjustly incarcerated and a violation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which has said obstetric emergencies must be treated as a health problem."
The organization has certainly been working hard to fight back against unjust sentences handed down to women in El Salvador. In November, they ruled that the country had violated the rights of a woman who died in prison in 2010. She, too, had received a 30-year sentence after a stillbirth. The court ruled that the government must pay reparations to that woman's family.
While it seems far-fetched to those living in the US, total abortion bans can often result in women being unjustly jailed after suffering a miscarriage or stillbirth. Dozens of women in the country have been imprisoned in the past 20 years, but activists have been working toward the release of those they believe were wrongly convicted. Since 2009, they've worked to free more than 60 women.
