Mother sentenced to 30 years in prison for infant’s death acquitted in El Salvador
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In El Salvador, a 28-year-old woman who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the death of her three-day-old baby was acquitted. She has already served more than seven years.
Lilian gave birth to a girl in a public hospital in 2015. The child had complications, so she was placed in an incubator. Three days later, the baby died, writes The Telegraph.
Subsequently, the prosecutor’s office accused the mother of not taking care of the fetus during the pregnancy, and therefore actually aborting it. The woman was charged with “aggravated murder.”
Lilian, who already has a 10-year-old daughter, insisted on her innocence during her more than seven years in prison. She claimed that she never intended to terminate the pregnancy, and the reason for the misfortune was that her uterus ruptured during childbirth.
| PHOTO: Reuters |
And only last month, the judge released her from 30 years in prison after reviewing the sentence. He ruled that Lilian’s baby actually died due to the medical negligence of the doctors who delivered the woman.
“I spent terrible, exhausting and difficult years in prison“, she said after her release.
The woman added that her daughter visited her behind bars only twice. Lilian did not want the child to see her in such a place. She called for an end to blaming and persecuting other innocent women.
In El Salvador, abortion is illegal under all circumstances: even in cases of rape or when the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother’s health. Many women were sentenced to decades in prison on charges of killing their children.
It is noted that Lilian was the last woman imprisoned in El Salvador on charges of abortion.
According to the Public Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, 73 women sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison for allegedly causing the death of their unborn or newborn children have been released in the past decade. About 20 such cases are still pending in El Salvador.
The President of El Salvador, Naib Bukele, announced his intention to improve conditions in hospitals to make childbirth safer. But he also has no intention of changing the current abortion law.
Abortion in the country is punishable by imprisonment for up to 12 years. However, in many cases the charges are changed to “aggravated murder”, which carries a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison.
It will be recalled that the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a 50-year-old decision that gave the right to abortion.
And in Poland, a woman pregnant with twins died, to whom doctors refused to perform an abortion.
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