Love in the Time of Zika · Global Voices
<PERSON>, an activist with the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion (Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto). Photo by <PERSON>
This post by <PERSON> was originally published by NACLA. An edited version appears below.
As the Zika virus ravaging Latin America moves northward, renewed attention has focused on the struggle for reproductive justice in El Salvador. In the face of alarming suggested (if contested) links between the mosquito-borne virus and microcephaly in infants, El Salvador’s Ministry of Health recommended that women delay pregnancy for two years; officials in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica and elsewhere have since issued similar warnings. And on February 1, the World Health Organization declared that the virus poses a global public health emergency.
Reproductive rights’ advocates both locally and abroad have objected to El Salvador’s calls for family planning: In El Salvador, abortion is defined by law as a criminal act, without exception.
Some important context: In 2009, the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party was elected to the presidency in Salvador, unseating the U.S.-backed, right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party after 20 years of consecutive rule. The FMLN’s election marked the first time in El Salvador’s history that a progressive administration governed the country. In 2014, the party won another five-year term.
Since taking office in 2009, the FMLN has overseen unprecedented gains for women’s healthcare— rarely reported on both domestically and abroad. The National Healthcare Reform of 2010 established over 600 community health clinics in rural and underserved areas, with healthcare promoters bringing pre- and post-natal care to women’s homes. In addition, the number of women seeking gynecological services in local public clinics rose from 30,154 in 2009 to 313,521 in 2014. These programs, along with the creation of maternal pre-birth centers for women living in areas with difficult hospital access, have reduced maternal mortality by an astounding 68% since 2009.
What’s more, the FMLN government inaugurated a new state-of-the-art National Women’s Hospital to replace the old Maternity Hospital, which languished in disrepair for years following a 2001 earthquake. The FMLN has also pioneered a groundbreaking model of “Women’s City” service centers, which provide mental and reproductive healthcare, legal support, childcare, credit and job training in six sites across the country, with three more planned for 2016. 803
And FMLN-sponsored legislation, such as the Gender Equity, Equality and Nondiscrimination Law and the Life Free of Violence against Women Law, has provided an important legal framework for women’s advocates.
But these impressive advances stand in stark contrast to the persistent criminalization of abortion in El Salvador. In 1997, the right-wing controlled legislature voted to criminalize abortion without exception, joining neighboring Honduras and Nicaragua along with Chile and the Dominican Republic in a disgraceful regional club of nations with absolute abortion bans. At the time, the FMLN divided its votes, with some legislators joining the right-wing parties in favor of criminalization and others voting against. Since the law went into effect in 1998, countless women have been forced to attempt to terminate pregnancies in unsafe clandestine conditions. Over two dozen women have been imprisoned for the crimes of murder or abortion— many apprehended while seeking healthcare in the wake of a miscarriage. With so much progress for women in other areas, how has this inhumane abortion ban remained intact?
On February 3, I sat down with <PERSON> of the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion in the capital city of San Salvador, El Salvador, to discuss the movement for reproductive justice and the political power dynamics behind one of the world’s most restrictive anti-choice laws. The following are excerpts from our conversation.
Can you start by explaining the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion?
The Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion arose in the framework of a binational summit in Nicaragua. Both El Salvador and Nicaragua have very similar legislation; in both countries no alternatives exist even when the life or the health of a women is at risk. So in 2009 there was this summit of social organizations to see what could be done.
She didn’t know she was pregnant, then she lost the pregnancy, and when she got to the hospital, basically what they said to her was, “You have committed murder.” Also in 2009, after a broad social movement mobilization, we achieved freedom for <PERSON>, a woman who was incarcerated for seven and a half years. Many feminist compañeras knew this case well before 2009. They got involved, documented and reconstructed the entire path and history of her case. 803