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When anti-abortion laws kill: the Central Americans who are leading the way

2023-03-21T10:41:09.014Z


The deaths of the Salvadoran Manuela, the Dominican Esperancita or the Nicaraguan Amelia are the background of the case 'Beatriz vs El Salvador' that the Inter-American Court is analyzing this Wednesday and that could force that country, one of the most restrictive in the region, to change their abortion laws


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Beatriz was just 21 years old, with a nine-month-old son and many financial difficulties when she was diagnosed with lupus.

A year later, in March 2013, she found out that she was pregnant for the second time in the emergency room of a Salvadoran hospital.

When the first ultrasounds were done, up to 15 doctors recommended an abortion since the fetus was growing without a skull or brain and the pregnancy would further weaken her delicate health.

If it came to childbirth, she would not survive.

But, in one of the five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where abortion is prohibited under any circumstances, it was very difficult for the woman to end the pregnancy that put her life at risk.

In El Salvador, and despite the warnings, everyone turned their backs on Beatriz: the State, the health workers, and the justice system.

And despite the fact that the inter-American justice system finally intervened, it was already too late.

The result was irreparable: the preventable death of a young woman, a boy who is now an orphan of ten years old, and an entire family whose lives changed.

The legislation, however, remains intact.

The Salvadoran Constitution does not allow the interruption of pregnancy under any circumstances, alleging that life begins at conception.

According to the Penal Code of that country, women who abort voluntarily or involuntarily are murderers.

“Mataniños”, they call those accused of abortion on the street and in jail, among whom are women who have suffered obstetric emergencies.

The sentences reach 50 years for them and 12 years for the doctors who help them.

"In the case of Justice," Humberto, Beatriz's brother, murmurs on the phone, "they simply prioritized the life of the fetus before that of my sister."

Despite the total ban, Beatriz's story moved part of a country that has spent decades fighting for the sexual and reproductive rights of half the population.

In 2013, her case reached the Inter-American Human Rights System at the hands of lawyers from the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Therapeutic Abortion of El Salvador and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL).

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IDH Court) forced the State to facilitate her abortion.

Beatriz managed to terminate her pregnancy 81 days after her request, but her body did not resist the disease that she already suffered from and which, according to the doctors, was aggravated by the pregnancy.

On October 8, 2017, the woman died after a minor traffic accident due to her extremely weak physical condition.

"I hope my example helps other women not to go through what I suffered," Beatriz wrote in a letter in mid-2013.

This Wednesday, your wish could begin to come true.

The Inter-American Court will hold the first hearing in a historic case: Beatriz vs. El Salvador, in which for the first time the region's highest justice body discusses the serious impacts of the absolute criminalization of abortion in the Central American country.

The ruling could crack one of the most restrictive laws in the world and set a precedent for the other four Latin American countries that still sentence women for abortion: Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Honduras.

“In Central America we are experiencing a regression of women's human rights.

The resurgence of conservatism and authoritarianism implies a huge loss of rights.

And the first to fall are always ours,” Claudia Paz y Paz, former Attorney General of Guatemala and current director of CEJIL's Program for Central America and Mexico, stated in statements to América Futura.

"We are facing a key moment for the validity of our rights."

Her story is the latest in a long line of women who also took on Goliath.

Manuela, in El Salvador, Esperancita, in the Dominican Republic, Amelia, in Nicaragua, or Ana and Aurora, in Costa Rica.

All of them lost their lives or their mental health due to draconian legislation that prevented them from deciding over their bodies.

The Inter-American Court has in its hands the history of many like them.

These are their cases:

“The State failed him”

Manuela, El Salvador.

She died in prison at the age of 33.

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Manuela died in prison on April 30, 2010. Two years earlier, she had been sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated homicide.

The crime for which she was accused of her: having been the victim of an obstetric emergency in the latrine of her humble house in a rural area of ​​El Salvador.

The complainant, the doctor she went to for help, declared that she had caused the abortion herself to hide her infidelity.

Her case was taken to the Inter-American Court and it issued a historic ruling.

"The Court notes that obstetric emergencies, because they are a medical condition, cannot automatically give rise to a criminal sanction," said the court.

Although the sentence did not have the right to abortion as the center of the debate, it did focus on the persecution that women suffer even when they involuntarily suffer one.

From the doctor's decision onwards, everyone violated Manuela's rights.

Medical professional secrecy was ignored, a police questioning was prioritized despite the fact that she was still convalescing, she was handcuffed to the stretcher for several days, they asked the parents —who, like Manuela, could not read or write— to sign a testimony in Against her daughter, the police and lawyers who went to the hospital called her a "light woman"...

“The entire state aid chain failed him.

And, furthermore, her trial was riddled with gender stereotypes,” explains Fernanda Vanegas, Associate Director of Advocacy and External Relations at the Center for Reproductive Rights, the litigation team in the case.

The 2021 Inter-American Court ruling ordered to regulate professional medical secrecy, to develop a protocol to attend to obstetric emergencies, to train health workers, and to create a comprehensive education plan.

A year later, El Salvador has “timidly” implemented only the first two points.

“The protocols are not perfect but they are, they already exist.

There are other considerations about how widespread they are, but they are under other pending measures."

Another of the great milestones of the litigation was that the court recognized that the judicial processes were biased by the fact that Manuela was a woman.

Thus, the Inter-American Court urged that magistrates be trained to get rid of these gender stereotypes "that judges and prosecutors tend to create about what they consider appropriate behavior for women."

The Citizen Association for the Decriminalization of Therapeutic Abortion has identified at least another 140 women in the last 20 years as victims of persecution due to obstetric emergencies.

Rosita was the last to be released from jail for a similar case, the result of a rape as well.

Six other women remain behind bars.

"They put the life of a fetus ahead of my daughter's"

Esperancita, Dominican Republic.

He died at the age of 16.

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For 11 years, Mrs. Rosa has gotten up and gone to bed feeling the weight of the other side of the empty bed.

On July 2, 2012, Rosaura Almonte Hernández, known as 'Esperancita', went to the doctor for high fever and was given two diagnoses: seven weeks pregnant and “a serious blood problem”.

Weeks later they found out it was acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

She needed urgent chemotherapy and yet she was denied because her treatment was not compatible with the life of the fetus.

On August 17, 46 days after her hospitalization, she suffered a miscarriage and respiratory arrest that ended her life.

“They put the life of a fetus ahead of my daughter's.

My daughter was killed.

She was killed by the Dominican State ”, says Doña Rosa, who lost her only daughter, through a video call.

Esperancita's case went around the world and made visible the situation of a country that does not guarantee women sexual and reproductive rights.

Barely two months ago, the reform of the Penal Code once again left behind one of the main social requests of the Caribbean country: that abortion be allowed when the life of the mother is in danger, when the fetus has a condition incompatible with life or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest;

what is known by the three causals.

However, it went ahead just as it did 139 years ago when it was written: calling those who interrupt the pregnancy murderers.

“When abortion is penalized, it is difficult to know exactly stories like Esperancita's.

As women are forced to resort to unsafe abortions outside the health system, there is a huge underreporting.

Many may die or have health complications and we don't find out,” explains Marcia Aguiluz, Legal Director for Latin America at Women's Link Worldwide.

"It is necessary that we discuss access to voluntary termination of pregnancy based on evidence, not on opinions," she settles.

Doña Rosa filed two proceedings in the Dominican Republic: a criminal complaint for medical negligence and another in contentious-administrative jurisdiction to declare the responsibility of the Ministry of Health for not adequately regulating the hospital that treated Esperancita and ensuring the care she needed. .

The first lawsuit remains unpunished and, in the last case, after two initial rejections, it is waiting to be resolved in the Supreme Court.

In addition, the case was recently admitted to be assessed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

“In my country they ignore me.

But if I have to go country to country telling what they did to my daughter, I'm going to do it.

Justice has to be done.

I need someone to recognize it, ”she says.

“They told her that [the pregnancy] was compatible with chemotherapy”

Amélia, Nicaragua.

She dies at the age of 28.

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In 2007, Nicaragua took a step backwards in terms of women's sexual rights by including the interruption of abortion as a crime in the Penal Code reform.

Two years later, Amelia embodied that enormous legal setback, in a case very similar to that of Esperancita.

She was diagnosed with a pregnancy and cancer that urgently required chemotherapy.

After several refusals by the State to grant her access to treatment, and only after the rapid intervention of the IACHR, was she able to receive medication for her disease, on one condition: that she carry out her pregnancy, since both were "perfectly compatible”.

The Minister of Health at the time, and current head of the portfolio of the National System for Disaster Prevention, Mitigation, and Attention, Guillermo González, announced that he himself would take out of his pocket the money for these “special medicines” brought from Europe.

Seven months after accessing treatment with no more information than the echoes of the media about the case, and with unstable and precarious medical care, she had a spontaneous abortion at home and died at the age of 28, leaving a 1-year-old girl orphaned. eleven.

“They forced her to continue with the pregnancy because they lied to her,” explains Mayte Ochoa, a Nicaraguan feminist and part of the IPAS Latin American team, by video call.

“They violated all her rights.

They did not let her decide, they hindered her conversation with her lawyers and other feminist organizations, they denied her medical attention and when they gave it to her they did it wrong... They also infantilized her by giving her false information, ”she says.

Amelia's case was the first in the region to receive precautionary measures from the IACHR.

“It is a clear precedent and an example that States do everything possible to ignore them.

In similar scenarios, only the inter-American system has made room for justice."

"Although therapeutic abortion exists, it is lost in the bureaucracy"

Ana and Aurora, Costa Rica.

Both still suffer from serious mental health problems.

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Although the vast majority of the region has decriminalized abortion, the most recent data shows that 757,000 women are treated each year for complications from clandestine abortions in Latin America and the Caribbean alone.

The absence of regulations and care protocols and the lack of health infrastructure to guarantee access to this right are behind these alarming figures.

Costa Rica is a clear example of what happens when the exception to the crime of abortion is only collected on paper.

This country is one of the few in Central America that allows therapeutic abortion, in accordance with article 121 of the Penal Code, but the rule has more of a legal vacuum than guarantees.

In Costa Rica there are no sanitary guides that indicate to health personnel how to carry out the interruption of pregnancy when the life or health of the woman is in danger.

This huge gap in the legislation was suffered in 2007 and 2012 by Ana and Aurora, two women who became pregnant and whose fetuses were diagnosed with malformations incompatible with life outside the womb.

Despite this diagnosis, both were forced to maintain a non-viable pregnancy and suffer the numerous physical and psychological consequences of giving birth to a stillborn fetus.

Sequelae that currently manifest with anxiety attacks, depression and social inhibition.

Ana even decided to get sterilized in 2013, because she can't conceive of the idea of ​​getting pregnant and having to go through something similar again.

"Even though therapeutic abortion exists, it gets lost in the bureaucracy," explains Cristina Rosero, legal advisor to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

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The families of both women and the entity took the case to the IACHR, which has already admitted the case and is studying it.

But in Costa Rica, the exception to the rule is far from being armored.

"Women's rights are usually the most fragile," laments Rosero.

“These advances are never total achievements;

It's time to stay vigilant.

Ours are the first to lie down."

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-03-21

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