"War on women", the real one

Pretty shocking stuff

El Salvador has one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the world. A side-effect is that women who suffer miscarriages are sometimes suspected of inducing an abortion - and can even be jailed for murder.

Last year when Maria Teresa Rivera suffered a miscarriage, she was sentenced to 40 years in jail for aggravated murder.

Quintanilla was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in jail..."The medical reports couldn't explain why the baby died, but the prosecutor made me out to be a criminal who could have saved my baby even though I had passed out in pain," she says.

Suicide was the most common cause of death in 2011 among 10-to-19-year-old girls, half of whom were pregnant, according to Health Ministry figures.

El Salvador is one of five countries with a total ban on abortion, along with Nicaragua, Chile, Honduras and Dominican Republic. Since 1998, the law has allowed no exceptions - even if a woman is raped, her life is at risk or the foetus is severely deformed.

My mom miscarried 3 or 4 times before my bro and I managed to make it out alive, then miscarried again a few years later before our parents gave up trying, so this is a question of particular interest to me.

posted by Purp at 10:34 AM

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