Friday, 29 March, 2024
HomeMedico-LegalEl Salvador releases woman jailed for 10 years after miscarriage

El Salvador releases woman jailed for 10 years after miscarriage

El Salvador has released another woman imprisoned for aggravated homicide who, after suffering an obstetric emergency, was accused of aborting her pregnancy in a country where abortion under any circumstances is banned.

A report in The Guardian notes that the woman, identified only as Elsy, had served more than a decade of a 30-year sentence. She was the fifth woman to have been released before completion of her sentence since December last year.

Morena Herrera, director of the non-profit Citizen Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion, said Elsy’s sentence was commuted and her rights restored. The woman was reunited with her family in Yayantique in eastern El Salvador last week.

In June 2011, Elsy, a 28-year-old single mother, was working as a domestic employee when she suffered an apparent miscarriage. She sought help, but instead of receiving medical assistance was immediately arrested on the suspicion that she had aborted her pregnancy. After a trial plagued by irregularities she was convicted and sentenced for aggravated homicide.

On 23 December, El Salvador released three women similarly imprisoned and a fourth on 17 January. The inter-American court of Human Rights ruled in November that El Salvador had violated the rights of a woman identified as Manuela who was sent to prison for breaching the abortion laws and died while serving her 30-year sentence.

 

The Guardian article – El Salvador woman punished under strict abortion law freed after 10 years (Open access)

 

See more from MedicalBrief archives:

 

US secretary of state defends 'Global Gag Rule' on pregnancy termination

 

End of 'Global Gag Rule' improves Uganda's abortion policy prospects

 

Last Missouri abortion clinic to close

 

 

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