Congresswomen Schultz and Torres speak out against El Salvador abortion ban
In a post on VICE, Democratic congresswomen Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Norma Torres are speaking out against El Salvador’s harsh abortion ban, which has landed countless women in jail. Women, wrongfully accused of having illegal abortions, have ended up in deplorable prisons and experienced severe discrimination as well as physical and verbal abuse. Schulz and Torres have now taken up the cause of Las 17, “the more than a dozen women in El Salvador who suffered obstetric emergencies and later wrongly imprisoned for homicide”. Decrying this lack of social justice, they write that “most of these imprisoned women are poor, living in rural areas, and have little to no education. They are the ones who are wrongfully targeted, vilified, and publicly shamed in order to set an example in El Salvador of what will happen to any woman who dares to end a pregnancy — even though none of these women had an abortion.” The congresswomen, together with 53 colleagues in Congress, are now publicly calling on Secretary John Kerry to urge President Sanchez Cerén to revisit their cases and free these women.
Source:
WITW staff, Women in the World