Barbaric! Court Upholds 30-Year Jail Term for Woman Who Suffered a Miscarriage

Teodora Vásquez was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment in 2007, because she suffered a miscarriage. Under El Salvador’s anti-abortion law, Vásquez’s case was prosecuted as a “homicide”.

El Salvador is one of a handful of Latin American countries with total bans on abortion. Vásquez has so far spent 10 years in prison, during which she had filed an appeal against her conviction in 2007.

Unfortunately, her appeal has been rejected and her conviction upheld by the tribunal which presided over her case.

Vásquez, 37, said she was working in 2007 when she began to experience intense pain, then bleeding. She called for help before fainting. As she came round, police officers surrounded her and accused her of murdering her baby by inducing an abortion of her nearly full-term baby, The Guardian learnt.

Authorities charged Vásquez with aggravated murder and she was convicted in 2008. Her attorneys appealed her sentence, presenting testimony that the baby girl was born dead.The court however, said it relied on the government autopsy’s conclusion that the baby was born alive and asphyxiated.

The non-profit Center for Reproductive Rights, which has been campaigning for the release of dozens of other women convicted of murder in El Salvador for obstetric emergencies, said the decision was “another slap in the face for Vásquez , who never committed any crime”.

Nancy Northup, the centre’s president and CEO, said;

“The Salvadoran court is perpetuating the criminal prosecution of women who suffer pregnancy complications, denying women their dignity, freedom and rights.

“El Salvador’s abortion law criminalises and wrongfully imprisons women. Today the Salvadoran court chose to deny Teodora her due process.”

Human rights group Amnesty International called the decision a step back for justice. It has also described El Salvador as “a nation known as the worst place in the world for women’s reproductive rights.”

Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s Americas director said;

“Teodora’s tragic story is a sad illustration of everything that is wrong with the justice system in El Salvador, where human rights seem to be a foreign concept.”
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The strictly Catholic El Salvador operates “anti-abortion laws that make no exception for rape, incest or the health of the mother.”

Since 1998 when El Salvador prohibited all abortions, even if pregnancy results from rape or incest; or if it poses threat to a woman’s life, the woman must carry the pregnancy to term, Amnesty said.

“It is estimated that between 1998 and 2013, more than 600 women were jailed after being accused of having had an abortion,” says the Centre for Reproductive Rights.

A glimmer of hope that El Salvador could overturn its abortion ban emerged earlier this year with the introduction of a parliamentary bill that proposed allowing abortion in cases of rape or human trafficking, when the foetus is unviable or to protect the pregnant woman’s health or life.

Recently, activists took to the streets to protest the absolute ban.