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One day in February 2008, Manuela * experienced severe pelvic and abdominal pain. He quickly went to a latrine located a few meters from his house, located in a rural area in El Salvador.
At that time, when he thought he was suffering from stomach indigestion, he had an obstetric emergency: he gave birth to a fetus and passed out.
Her mother managed to pay a neighbor to take her to the hospital, where she was admitted with heavy bleeding and symptoms of preeclampsia.
Manuela, illiterate and poor, was in the third trimester of her pregnancy.
It was then that the nightmare began: the medical staff, instead of treating her, accused her of inducing an abortion to hide an alleged infidelity and called the police.
Without the possibility of defending herself with a lawyer, Manuela, who was 31 at the time with two young children, was transferred to prison and then sentenced to prison. 30 to prison for the crime of aggravated homicide.
Two years later, in 2010, he died cncer linftico, handcuffed to a hospital bed.
13 years after the brutal episode, Manuela’s case is examined by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in two days of public hearings, held this week.
It is the last step in a long road that his family had to travel in search of justice. And this could turn into a historic decision because, according to the complainants, this is the first time that a case of this type has reached the IACHR.
The Center for Reproductive Rights and the Feminist Collective are the organizations behind the lawsuit aimed at having the Salvadoran state recognize that in Manuela’s case, there have been a series of violations of her human rights and those of her. from his family.
A statement in support of Manuela’s family could set an important precedent for a country which has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world and where termination of pregnancy is prohibited in all its forms and punishable by jail .
The litigation began in 2012, when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights start your investigation.
Seven years later, in 2019, he presented the case to the Court, finding that the state had violated the right to personal liberty for the< détention illégale >> of the victim, the right to judicial protection, to the presumption of innocence, to life and health, among others.
According to the Commission’s report, Manuela “did not receive a full medical diagnosis when she was deprived of her liberty, nor did she receive timely and adequate medical treatment, which would have allowed her to prolong” her life, since since 2007 she had cancer.
In this context, the complainants hope that the Salvadoran state will recognize its responsibility and restore Manuela’s dignity.
“We want her family to be completely repaired, that there is dignity of Manuela’s image and with it the dignity of all women who have been criminalized for obstetric complications and that non-repetition measures be established in order to that no woman should experience the transit from hospital to prison, “said Morena Herrera, the activist and defender of human rights of the feminist collective.
For its part, the delegation defending the Salvadoran state He said Manuela’s rights were respected, as she would have received legal assistance within the time limit set by law after her arrest. Regarding medical care, they argued that the woman had received treatment at different levels of the public health system in this country.
Pro-life organizations, meanwhile, assured that this trial had been promoted by pro-abortion entities and that, in fact, Manuela had induced an abortion voluntarily.
“Here, the victim is the child, not Manuela,” said the president of the S a la Vida Foundation, Julia Regina from Cardenal.
Despite the fact that the hearings ended on March 11, it is possible that the decision of the IACHR will not be known for a year.
Manuela’s case is not isolated.
In recent years, several women in El Salvador have been accused of abortion and sentenced to prison terms of several decades. This is so because even though the anti-abortion law states that the penalties range from 2 to 8 to, several times the position changes to “aggravated homicide”, which carries a minimum sentence of 30 years.
For many supporters of the termination of pregnancy, the arrival of the president Check it out who promised to try to reform the most stagnant structures in the country, hoped that things could change in this area as well.
But any changes to abortion must first go through Congress, which doesn’t even have its discussion on its agenda.
In any case, it is a public policy that generates a large division in the country, with strong pro-life organizations defending its criminalization.
* The complaining organizations have asked to maintain confidentiality regarding Manuela’s real name, demanding that she be called this way to protect her privacy.
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