International court examines case of Salvadoran woman convicted of abortion

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights will examine from Wednesday March 10 the case of a Salvadorian convicted of abortion and died in detention.

Manuela - a pseudonym, as the family requested that her name not be revealed - had been sentenced in August 2008 for abortion.

According to her family, it was a miscarriage.

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Sentenced to thirty years in prison for

, Manuela died, tied to her bed, on April 30, 2010 in the prison service of the National Hospital of San Salvador, where she was being treated for lymph cancer.

Manuela's eldest son, 21, told a press conference.

The judgment of the court, which sits in San José, Costa Rica, may not be delivered for another year.

This is the first time that a case of conviction for abortion in El Salvador has been brought before the Court, underlines Catalina Martinez, director for Latin America of the NGO Center for Reproductive Rights.

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"We ask that the Court order measures

(of reparation)

and restores

of Manuela, demands for her part Morena Herrera, coordinator of the Salvadoran Citizen Group for the decriminalization of abortion (ACDATEE).

Manuela, who could neither read nor write, lived in a deprived rural area.

According to Sara Garcia of the El Salvador Feminist Collective, it was the undiagnosed cancer she was suffering from that caused the miscarriage.

The Salvadoran penal code strictly prohibits abortion and provides for sentences of eight years in prison.

However, very often judges qualify the loss of an unborn child as

, punishable by sentences of up to 50 years in prison.

Twenty women are still imprisoned in El Salvador for such acts, according to the Foundation for the Application of Law (Fespad).