El Salvador Judges Delay Ruling on Woman Jailed a Decade Already for Aborting

HAVANA TIMES – Teodora del Carmen Vásquez is an El Salvadoran woman who suffered a stillbirth in 2007, after the rapid onset of serious pain while she was at work, notes Amnesty International. Police arrested her as she lay in a pool of blood. She was later sentenced to 30 years for ‘aggravated homicide’ under El Salvador’s strict ban on abortions of any kind and has been in jail since 2008.

Her case was scheduled for review but the judges delayed making a ruling. In a news item from Democracy Now she is quoted today as saying:

“They should give me my freedom. They should give me my freedom because I am innocent, because I have a family who is fighting for me, because I have people who love me, and I need to be with them.”

Amnesty International warns that her appeal for an early release is being considered by the same judges who sentenced her to a 30-year prison term over a decade ago.

Women in less than a dozen countries, including El Salvador and Nicaragua, both curiously with supposedly left wing revolutionary political parties in power, do not allow abortion even in the case of incest, rape or if the women’s life is in danger.