Kenia said she was 17 when she had a miscarriage after a fall and was sent to a Salvadoran jail on suspicion of having had an abortion.
Nine years later, she is out after receiving a reprieve, but feels like she was robbed of her youth in a country with among the world’s strictest abortion laws.
She was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Photo: Reuters
“I was deprived of my freedom for such an unjust reason,” Kenia earlier this week told a news conference with three other women who were similarly punished.
“I lost my youth, I lost my family, all my aspirations were taken away from me,” she said in tears.
The four women, who wore masks throughout the briefing, gave their real first names, but withheld their surnames to avoid being further “stigmatized.”
After her fall, Kenia recalled that “the last thing I remember seeing was lots of lights... I was in hospital on a stretcher and there were policemen guarding me and taking pictures of me.”
One police officer told her that he would make sure that she would “rot in prison,” and “that is what happened,” she said.
Kenia is one of 62 women to have had their “abortion” sentences commuted since 2009, thanks to the efforts of advocacy groups, pro-choice campaigner Sara Garcia said.
However, 10 remain behind bars, and two are still awaiting trial.
El Salvador has had an outright ban on abortion since 1998, even in cases of rape or if the health of the woman or fetus are in danger.
Terminating a pregnancy can send a woman to jail for up to eight years, but Salvadoran judges often instead find women guilty of “aggravated homicide,” which is punishable by up to 50 years in prison.
Many women are prosecuted after seeking medical help for complications in pregnancy, suspected of having attempted an abortion.
The law gives rise to “stigma and prejudice and creates conditions for women to be persecuted, denounced, prosecuted and unjustly imprisoned,” Morena Herrera of the ACDATEE abortion rights group said.
Elsy, 38, was recently freed after “10 difficult years in prison” during which she was separated from her son.
Evelyn, 34, spent 13 years behind bars.
“This law is unfair,” Evelyn told the news conference. “We are considered criminals because we are women.”
Karen, 28, recounted that she fell ill at home and woke up “in hospital, cuffed to a stretcher.”
Even as a newly free woman, she said she felt judged and regularly received “dirty looks.”
“It is important to obtain the freedom of all women unjustly imprisoned, but we must also ensure that there are no more women reported at public hospitals,” Herrera said.
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