Salvadoran Woman Wrongfully Imprisoned for Pregnancy-Related Complications Denied Pardon
Salvadoran Woman Wrongfully Imprisoned for Pregnancy-Related Complications Denied Pardon
(PRESS RELEASE) El Salvador’s Congress has denied freedom to “Guadalupe,” a rape survivor who became pregnant, suffered an obstetric emergency and was wrongfully convicted of and imprisoned for homicide—failing to approve her pardon on Friday by just one vote, despite the recommendation from both the Human Rights Congressional Committee and Supreme Court Committee that she be released.
El Salvador’s abortion ban is one of the strictest in the world, with the country repeatedly ignoring its international human rights obligations to ensure women’s reproductive health and rights. For more than 16 years, abortion in all circumstances has been criminalized, and countless women have been sentenced to years and even decades in prison under deplorable conditions—including many like “Guadalupe” who simply suffered obstetric emergencies.
Said Mónica Arango, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Center for Reproductive Rights:
“The Salvadoran Congress has failed Guadalupe and the countless other Salvadoran women like her who have been cruelly and wrongly imprisoned at a time when they desperately needed critical health care.
“For too long, El Salvador’s absolute abortion ban has inflicted immeasurable harm on women and their families in violation of their fundamental human rights.
“We stand with Agrupación Ciudadana and our partners around the world in the face of this devastating news to continue shining a bright light on the Salvadoran government’s human rights violations.”
In December, a coalition of NGOs led by Agrupación Ciudadana and the Center, launched the “Las17” campaign calling for the release of “Guadalupe” and 16 other Salvadoran women who suffered obstetric emergencies and were all convicted for homicide. “Las17” are currently serving 30-40 year sentences.
The Center for Reproductive Rights has worked for more than 12 years to expose the consequences that the blanket abortion ban in El Salvador has on the lives of women. Recently, the Center and the Agrupación Ciudadana co-authored the report Marginalized, Persecuted and Imprisoned: The Effects of El Salvador’s Total Criminalization of Abortion that documents the human rights consequences of the abortion ban, and includes the personal stories of five women who were unfairly prosecuted for illegal abortion after suffering obstetric emergencies without receiving medical attention. The report analyzes how El Salvador’s health, judicial and prison systems fail to guarantee women’s human rights.
