Story highlights
- Alice Driver: Passage of a recent bill in the House of Representatives shows that for some Republicans, criminalizing abortion is a priority
- If Americans want to know what women's lives are like in a country where abortion is a crime, they should listen to women in El Salvador, she writes
This week, the
House of Representatives passed the "
Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," a bill criminalizing abortions after 20 weeks. The White House, through a statement of administration policy released on Monday night, backed the measure, meaning President Trump plans to sign it if it passes the Senate. Courts have recently struck down similar bans for violating Roe v. Wade and other rulings about abortion. In
2014, for instance, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case on Arizona's 20-week ban, letting stand a ruling from the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which said Arizona's law violated multiple Supreme Court rulings, including Roe v. Wade.
In July, the Trump administration
proposed a cut of $213.6 million from teen pregnancy prevention programs and research, even though those programs have been proven to decrease unwanted pregnancies and abortion.
If Americans want to know what the lives of women are like in a country where abortion and even miscarriage have criminal penalties, they should listen to women in El Salvador, where I have been reporting for a project on women in prison.
In El Salvador, abortion is illegal, with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Often, women who are poor are charged with aggravated homicide even in cases of miscarriage. To put the situation of sexual and reproductive rights in El Salvador in context, it has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Latin America, where, as a health official
told Reuters in 2016, more than a third of all pregnancies occurred among girls aged 10 to 19. Nearly two in every five pregnancies among girls in El Salvador aged 10 to 12 are the result of rape and incest but the rapists often go unpunished,
according to the UN Population Fund. Since 1998,
at least 150 women have been prosecuted under El Salvador's abortion ban.
In 2013, the case of
22-year-old "Beatriz" reached the Supreme Court in El Salvador. Due to various medical conditions, her pregnancy put her life in danger, and she wanted to have an abortion. The court ruled against her and she was forced to carry the fetus, which was
delivered via C-section and lived for five hours.
At 20 years old, Adriana, from San Salvador, El Salvador, gave birth at home alone to a child that wasn't breathing. Adriana requested that her name be changed for her safety. "My body was shaking. It was midnight. There was no transportation," she described. By the time she made it to the hospital, Adriana said that the staff -- rather than providing her with medical attention -- accused her of homicide and called the police. She was sent to
Ilopango Women's Prison where she spent five months while her case went to court. The judge charged her with aggravated homicide and gave her the
maximum sentence -- 30 years.