Evelyn Hernández Abortion

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Evelyn Beatriz Hernández, a young woman of 21 years and victim of a prolonged sexual abuse who spent more than two years behind bars accused of the murder of the baby she aborted, was acquitted this Monday by a judge in El Salvador. The resolution ends the controversial case that shook the Central American nation.

The events date back to 2016 when Hernández was 32 weeks pregnant. According to his testimony, the resident in the province of Cuscatlán felt severe abdominal pain and aborted the son she was expecting in a septic tank. Back then Hernandez's mother said her daughter had passed out, neither of them knew she was expecting pregnant. The girl said that she had been raped multiple times but had remained silent because her attackers had threatened to kill her mother.

The then teenager's mother then took her to a local clinic where the case raised suspicions. From there the interrogations and the subsequent arrest of Hernández began.

The case was further complicated when experts declared that it was impossible to determine whether the baby had died before or after being placed in the septic tank. The official cause of death was "aspiration pneumonia." In 2017, the Supreme Court of that country sentenced Hernández to 30 years behind bars, accusing her of not protecting the fetus, as reported by TIME.

"We believe that the judge was extremely fair in his ruling," said Bertha María Deleón, Hernández's lawyer, who together with her team set out to seek the freedom of her client through a new trial. "Those of us who work and accompany women who suffer injustices, know that in each case we leave a little bit of life … but everything is worth it when JUSTICE and FREEDOM are achieved and these moments of intense happiness are within our reach," exclaimed the lawyer. on Twitter by sharing photos of the dramatic moments in court after the ruling.

"Thank God justice has been done," Hernandez exclaimed in three tears after the verdict was announced. Surrounded by her lawyer and a large group of women who support her, the woman appears in photos crying and receiving comfort from her colleagues.

Henández became a symbol of the fight for women's rights in El Salvador and her case has generated a movement in favor of reforms in the abortion laws in that country.

The case also became a litmus test for Nayib Bukele, the young president of El Salvador, who has previously noted that he believes abortion is only admissible when the life of the creature is at risk. but at the same time he has opposed criminalizing the fact that a woman suffers an abortion.

"This is a resounding victory for women's rights in El Salvador," exclaimed Erik Guevara-Rosas, director for the Americas of the human rights organization Amnesty International. "This affirms that no woman should be accused of homicide for the simple fact of having suffered an obstetric emergency."