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Flimsy medical evidence, flawed trials put women behind bars for at least 30 years, lawyer seeking pardons says
When I met Maria Teresa Rivera at El Salvador’s Ilopango women's prison late last year, she had already spent three years behind bars for a crime she says she did not commit.
In 2011, Rivera was accused of inducing an abortion - a crime in El Salvador, where the procedure is banned, even in cases of rape, incest, a deformed foetus or when a woman's life is in danger.
Rivera says she suffered a miscarriage. The judge didn’t believe her and sentenced her to 40 years imprisonment for aggravated murder - the longest sentence ever imposed on a woman in the Central American nation for abortion.
Rivera’s voice cracked when she told me her fellow inmates would chant “baby killer” as she lay on a mattress on the floor of the overcrowded prison cell at night.
She says her only solace is reading the bible and going to the prison church every day, where she prays for her release and to be reunited with her young son.
Now there’s a glimmer of hope that Rivera’s plight, and her wait for justice, could soon be over.
In a landmark decision earlier this month, lawmakers in El Salvador’s Congress voted to pardon Carmen Guadalupe, a woman accused of abortion and sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder. She had already served seven years of her sentence by the time she was pardoned.
Guadalupe and Rivera are two of 17 women, all jailed for more than 30 years for the crime of abortion, for whose freedom human rights groups have been campaigning.
Lawyers supporting the women say they were all wrongly jailed for inducing abortions when in fact they suffered miscarriages, stillbirths, or pregnancy complications.
The vote to pardon Guadalupe may pave the way for the release of other women, including Rivera, who have been imprisoned for similar crimes, says Dennis Munoz, a Salvadoran human rights lawyer working for Citizen Group for the Decriminalisation of Therapeutic, Ethical and Eugenic Abortion (CFDA), a local rights group.
Last year, Munoz submitted a petition to El Salvador’s Supreme Court seeking pardons for and the release of the 17 imprisoned women, after all other legal avenues had been exhausted.
“A little light has shone on these cases following the pardon (by Congress),” Munoz told me in a telephone interview from the capital, San Salvador.
“The case of Guadalupe sets an important precedent. Never before in El Salvador’s history has a woman been pardoned for a crime. Two women in the group of 17 have similar circumstances to Guadalupe and were accused of killing their new-born babies when they had pregnancy complications. So there’s some hope more pardons will be issued.”
Munoz says he took up the cases because the convictions were based on flimsy medical evidence and flawed trials.
“The pardon issued admitted a judicial error had been made. There was never any proof that these women intentionally harmed or killed their unborn or new-born babies,” he said.
The CFDA says at least 129 women have been jailed under the country's abortion law.
The fate of Rivera and the other women imprisoned for abortion rests with El Salvador’s Supreme Court judges, whose ruling is eagerly awaited but could take months, Munoz said.
“Everyone’s been talking about the news of the pardon in jail. Rivera is hopeful she can leave jail,” he said.
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