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| AP story in the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 20, 2019 |
The saddest story in today's LA Times: a young woman served 2 and 1/2 years in prison for having a miscarriage at 32 weeks in El Salvador. And on Monday she was retried and found not guilty--of abortion.
The AP story is heart-wrenching.
The father of the baby never faced a jury. He never spent one night in prison.
Her crime was "failing to protect her fetus." She did not know she was pregnant. She went to the latrine outside her home with severe abdominal pains and did not know she had delivered a premature baby.
She had no medical care and no emotional care, either before or after giving birth.
She didn't have the opportunity to get some form of birth control or to understand the signs of pregnancy.
Perhaps she didn't seek help because the father was a family member. Perhaps she didn't go to the hospital afterward because she knew she might be accused of deliberately ending the pregnancy.
This is the status of a poor young woman in Cuidad Delgado, El Salvador. No one outside her family cared about her until she gave birth prematurely, and then they only cared enough to put her in jail.
El Salvador--the nation named for the Savior.
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