A 21-year-old woman in El Salvador has been sentenced to 50 years in prison for aggravated manslaughter after authorities claimed she killed her baby girl after birth.
Leslie Ramirez was at home on the evening of June 17, 2020, when she had an immediate urge to go to the bathroom, according to the feminist NGO Citizens for Decriminalizing Abortion, which advocates for women.
Ramirez, 19, who claims she was five months pregnant at the time, recalled that "there was something wrong with her body when she accidentally gave birth to her unborn child.
Morena Herrera, the head of the NGO, told Reuters that Ramirez tried to cut the umbilical cord herself after a miscarriage, but it was dark and her house had no electricity.
She was taken to the San Juan de Dios hospital in the western province of San Miguel for treatment and was remanded in custody a week later during a court hearing due to ill health.
However, authorities in El Salvador have argued that Ramirez was nearing full term with her baby, and she was stabbed in the neck six times after giving birth.
"This is not the first time prosecutors have constructed a story that completely criminalizes women," Herrera said.
Ramirez was sentenced to 50 years in prison last week for aggravated manslaughter
Citizens' initiative to decriminalize abortion wants to appeal the court's decision, which it describes as a one-sided sentence.
The legal process against Lesly was full of irregularities and prejudices, in that sense the defense requested to annul the disquisition stage because the judge didn't admit the objectification of substantiation that demonstrated his innocence, for illustration, he didn't value the social drug expert opinion substantiation of the gender violence to which she had been subordinated,' Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of revocation said in a statement.
According to several reports, El Salvador, has some of the world's harshestanti-abortion laws, which ban all kinds of terminations indeed if the gestation poses a threat to the mama 's life or results from rape or incest.
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