A Discriminatory and Dangerous Law that is Killing Women and Girls in El Salvador
A Discriminatory and Dangerous Law that is Killing Women and Girls in El Salvador
By Guest Writer
December 8, 2014 at 12:30 PM
By Chloe Horsma, Amnesty International USA youth activist
Probably the greatest obstacle I’ve ever faced around my sexual and reproductive rights was a borderline-uncomfortable conversation with my mom when I wanted to look into birth control for the first time. Many of my friends had similar experiences. It seemed to me that this was how it was supposed to be–people making decisions about their own health and reproductive rights without hindrance or fear–and for a while, it escaped my notice that not everyone was so lucky.
Every day, all over the world, women and girls are denied the rights I’ve been able to enjoy. There’s no reason that I should be the lucky one. It’s only chance. It’s only by some stroke of luck, or fate, or universal intervention, or whatever you want to call it, that I wasn’t born in El Salvador, where not only would I not be given access to resources and education about my reproductive rights, but my safety and freedom would be at risk just for my biological ability (and cultural obligation) to carry children. Because in El Salvador, abortion is banned in every circumstance. It’s a ban that forces women and girls to carry a pregnancy to term even if it will kill them. And that could’ve been me. And if it had been, I would hope that there would be someone who would fight with me for my rights.
The total abortion ban in El Salvador has been in effect for fifteen years. That’s fifteen years of women in El Salvador losing their lives, whether to prison, to unsafe, clandestine abortions, to preventable complications, or–faced with impossible injustice and no foreseeable hope–by their own hand. Even women and girls who become pregnant as a result of rape are prohibited from accessing an abortion: one senseless act of violence is compounded by another, the second by her own government forcing her to give birth.
As hard as El Salvador might try to deny it, their laws will never fully stop women and girls from trying to access their rights. It only puts them at more and more risk. It’s the job of the state to protect their people, not threaten them and criminalize their fundamental rights. And yet, this is what the law does.
More:
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/americas/a-discriminatory-and-dangerous-law-that-is-killing-women-and-girls-in-el-salvador/
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