The Prosecutor’s Office, however, argued in a statement that the severe penalty was imposed because the young woman murdered the newborn after causing several injuries to her neck with a knife.
“The forensic opinion determined as the final cause of death: throat slashing due to a contusive-cutting wound caused by a knife,” said the Prosecutor’s Office.
In El Salvador, prosecutors and judges classify obstetric emergencies and cases of miscarriage as “aggravated homicide,” with sentences of up to 50 years.
This, despite the fact that the Salvadoran Penal Code since 1998 establishes penalties of up to 8 years for abortion, a practice prohibited in the Central American country in all cases.
Despite the fact that in recent years there has been an advance of the “green tide” in Latin America in search of access to legal and safe abortion, the procedure, without restriction of reasons, is only allowed in a handful of countries.
Along with Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, El Salvador is one of the four Latin American countries that prohibit abortion without exception. Human rights organizations have demanded to repeal the law that prohibits the interruption of pregnancy, but they have not been successful.
This is “the first time in history that the maximum penalty (50 years) has been applied since abortion was criminalized in an absolute manner,” said Acdatee.
Since 2009, 65 women convicted of health emergencies during pregnancy, most of them in precarious economic conditions, have been released with the support of Acdatee and other groups.
Last year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court-IDH ) found the State of El Salvador responsible for the case of Manuela, a Salvadoran woman who died in 2010 in prison, serving a 30-year sentence for an out-of-hospital delivery classified as aggravated homicide.
With information from