This is what it looks like when a country makes abortion illegal--El Salvador

[Starry Messenger]

http://reproductiverights.org/en/press-room/center-for-reproductive-rights-files-case-revealing-the-horrifying-reality-of-el-salvador

Center for Reproductive Rights Files Case Revealing the Horrifying Reality of El Salvador's Ban on Abortion

Center for Reproductive Rights Files Case Revealing the Horrifying Reality of El Salvador's Ban on Abortion
Manuela’s story demonstrates the fatal consequences of El Salvador’s law and why it must change

03.21.12 - (PRESS RELEASE) El Salvador’s absolute ban on abortion has resulted in tragic and often fatal consequences for the women living in that country — resulting in the arbitrary imprisonment of women suffering from miscarriages and complications in their pregnancies, according to a petition filed today with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights by the Center for Reproductive Rights and local Salvadoran organization Colectiva de Mujeres para el Desarrollo Local (Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto Ético, Terapéutico y Eugenésico de El Salvador).

Today’s petition was filed on behalf of “Manuela” (a pseudonym) and her family. Manuela was a 33-year-old Salvadoran mother of two who was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison after suffering severe complications giving birth. El Salvador has one of the most extreme abortion bans in the world—prohibiting abortion even when necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life and imposing harsh criminal penalties on both women and physicians.

“Women are paying a high price, in many cases with their lives, for El Salvador’s absolute ban on abortion,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), a global legal organization dedicated to advancing women's reproductive health. “El Salvador’s laws have turned emergency rooms into crime scenes, forcing pregnant women to live under a dark cloud of suspicion. The international community must come together to demand an end to this cruel treatment of women and make a commitment to safeguard fundamental reproductive rights.”

<snip>

Abortion was once legal in El Salvador under a narrow set of circumstances, but even these limited exceptions were removed in 1998, as documented by CRR in a report released in 2000. Now El Salvador is among five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean — including Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and Chile — where abortion is absolutely prohibited even when the woman’s health or life is at risk. More information about abortion restrictions around the globe is available at CRR’s interactive World Abortion Laws map.

Pro-Life Nation

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/magazine/09abortion.html?_r=1

<snip>

With the signing of the Chapultepec Agreements in Mexico in 1992, El Salvador's civil war came to an end. As the nation turned away from its violent years, there were calls from both sides of the political divide that it was time to re-examine certain social issues. One of them was abortion. The country's abortion law, like the law in most Latin American countries at the time, was already a near-ban with only a few exceptions, specifically in cases of rape, serious fetal malformation and grave risk to the mother's life. For decades, the law was rarely discussed, and enforced quietly and somewhat subjectively. Once the issue was raised in the political arena, though, Salvadorans discovered that a brand-new kind of discourse on abortion had emerged in Latin America.

<snip>

The legislative battle and its outcome did not escape the attention of leaders of anti-abortion groups in the United States. Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, the head of Human Life International, based in Virginia, is intimately familiar with the campaign in El Salvador and says that there are lessons for Americans to learn from it. For one thing, as Euteneuer sees it, the Salvadoran experience shows that all moves to expand abortion rights are pushed through by "elite" institutions of government (the U.S. Supreme Court, for example); by contrast, Euteneuer contends, when the laws are tightened, a grass-roots campaign is inevitably responsible. "El Salvador is an inspiration," he told me recently, an important victory in what he called "the counterrevolution of conscience."

<snip>

"Back-alley abortion" is a term that has long been part of the abortion debate. In the United States, in the years since Roe v. Wade, it has come to seem metaphorical, perhaps even hyperbolic, but it happens to conjure precisely D.C.'s experience. And it's easy in El Salvador to find plenty of evidence that D.C.'s story is neither isolated nor the worst case. A report by the Center for Reproductive Rights offers this grim list of tools used in clandestine abortions: "clothes hangers, iron bars, high doses of contraceptives, fertilizers, gastritis remedies, soapy water and caustic agents (such as car battery acid)." That list is meant to disgust a reader in the same way that imagery of mangled fetuses is meant to when employed by those who oppose abortion. But the criminalization of abortion in the modern age, in El Salvador at least, is not so simple as a grim return to the back alley. For the most part, the new law has not resulted in a spike in horror stories of painful and botched clandestine procedures.

To begin with, when a woman might face jail time for an abortion, she's less likely to discuss her pregnancy at all. According to a study on attempted suicide and teen pregnancy published last year by academics at the University of El Salvador, some girls who poison their wombs with agricultural pesticide (its efficacy being a Salvadoran urban legend) would rather report the cause of their resulting hospital visit as "attempted suicide," which is not as felonious a crime nor as socially unbearable as abortion. "They don't want to be interviewed about abortion," Irma Elizabeth Asencio, one of the study's authors, explained to me. "They know they have committed a crime."

[enough]

1. So terrible. I really think we in the US have not even begun to imagine

the reality looming behind the attempt to ban abortion, the world they want to create.

[Starry Messenger]

4. There seems to be an undercurrent, that the Republicans are bluffing.

I used to think that too, that it was just used to rile up their base and they'd never touch the actual laws. I don't think that anymore.

[Lifelong Protester]

2. This is absolutely horrible

If you have not read the article, folks, please do so. It is appalling.
This is what theocracy looks like, IMO.

[RainDog]

3. k&r n/t

[flamingdem]

5. What's "Catholic" about this barbaric treatment of women? n/t

[Starry Messenger]

6. Conservatives hijacked democracy--via religion

The pope's (John Paul II) appointment of Lacalle 11 years ago brought to the Archdiocese of San Salvador a different kind of religious leader. Lacalle, an outspoken member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, redirected the country's church politics. Lacalle's predecessors were just as firmly opposed to abortion as he was. What he brought to the country's anti-abortion movement was a new determination to turn that opposition into state legislation and a belief that the church should play a public role in the process. In 1997, conservative legislators in the Assembly introduced a bill that would ban abortion in all circumstances. The archbishop campaigned actively for its passage.

"The ban was part of a backlash," I was told by Luisa Cabal, the legal consultant for Latin America at the Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights organization based in New York. The proposed bill, Cabal said, was a result of "the church's role in pushing for a conservative agenda." With the archbishop's vocal support of the ban and conservative groups fully energized, opposition soon became difficult. Any argument in favor of therapeutic abortion was met with a religious counterargument.

<snip>

Positions on the strengthened ban essentially split along party lines, at least at first. "The majority of our leadership came out in opposition," Lorena Peña, an FMLN (left-wing) representative in the Assembly, told me. But the FMLN held only a minority of the seats in the 84-member Assembly, and they were unable to stop the bill. The proposal to ban all abortions passed the Assembly in 1997 and became the law of the country in April 1998.

<snip>

The leadership of the FMLN, afraid that the party would be trounced in the coming elections if they were on the record as opposing the amendment, freed its deputies from their obligation to follow the party's position and urged them to vote with their consciences. When the final vote was taken, the amendment passed overwhelmingly.

[janlyn]

7. No need to look at a foreign country

Utah's miscarriage law is a travesty...basically stating that anyone can say you caused your miscarriage and you can be jailed for it...



Another example of republicans saying to us women that we are nothing more than a life support system for a uterus!!

[Lucy Goosey]

11. Oh, holy crap...

...I hadn't heard about this. (In my defense, I'm not American.) That law is disgusting.

I was talking with some friends about the abortion situation in the US (we are in Canada), and we were throwing around the idea, almost kind of jokingly, of starting a non-profit that would help American women arrange for abortions in Canada. I'm starting to think there might really be a market for such an organization.

[Starry Messenger]

12. If the Republicans win, the time could be coming.

In many states, this is already a problem and an organization like that could really help. Travel money is probably the biggest hurdle. Women could go to other states for an abortion, but if you're broke, there's no way to make it there and stay there until you are done, etc.

[valerief]

8. If These Walls Could Talk was a good movie about abortion in 3 decades.

Of course, when abortion was illegal in the first story, people had the right to an attorney and were able to make a liveable wage. Life was different then. Illegal abortions in this country *now* would be much worse than back then.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116607/

[JDPriestly]

9. Imprisoned simply for being a woman with a statistically rare problem during her

pregnancy.

This is outrageous. Why don't the women of El Salvador end this discrimination and ignorance. They need to educate their men.

[Starry Messenger]

10. Educating people out of institutional ignorance is a long process.

Especially when it is woven right into the power structure. Personhood beginning at conception is written into their constitution. We all know how those laws can take a long time to overturn.

A woman in the government there was harshly criticized for signing onto a call for reformation of the law:

http://voiceselsalvador.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/women%E2%80%99s-rights-debate-heats-up-in-el-salvador/

Access to abortion became a subject of public debate earlier this year after Maria Evelyn Martinez, Director of the Salvadoran Institute for Women (Idesmu, for its name in Spanish), ratified the Consensus of Brazil without the President’s explicit consent. The Consensus was developed during the 11th Regional Conference for Women in Latin America in the Caribbean, an event sponsored by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the United Nations, which took place on the 16th of July in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Consensus calls for greater protection of women’s rights, and asks that all signing countries reconsider any laws that punish a woman for seeking an abortion and promise safe and secure access to abortion where it is permitted by law. By ratifying the Consensus, Ms. Martinez agreed that El Salvador would revisit its strict anti-abortion laws. Her action is widely unpopular and was harshly criticized before being overturned by President Funes.

Martinez signed the document with the understanding that she was authorized to participate fully in the forum using only her own judgment. In the governing laws of Idesmu it specifically states that the director is authorized to “create, circulate, and promote effective compliance with the agreements ratified by El Salvador in relation to the improvement of women’s quality of life” (Idesmu Charter). Given this language, Ms. Martinez felt that she was able to sign on behalf of the nation without the President’s specific approval.

However, in a public statement in late August, Funes criticized Martinez’ actions and said that he has “never given any consent for the revision of the country’s laws.” He continued, “the national constitution states that life begins at the moment of conception, and as long as this constitution is in effect we must respect its laws” (El Faro). He also stated that he would communicate with the coordinating bodies of the Consensus of Brazil to inform them that Ms. Martinez was not authorized to sign the document and that El Salvador would be withdrawing its signature from this aspect of the agreement.

The men need to display a willingness to be educated.

[Starry Messenger]

13. kick.