Almost 10,000 women were investigated in the last decade for abortions, in many cases involuntary. A new study shows that, even if effective imprisonment is not applied, the financial, labor, and mental health effects cause severe damage to the women who are reported.
Yesenia was still bleeding when two police officers entered her hospital room. She was 24 years old and had arrived with a spontaneous abortion, meaning the natural and involuntary loss of pregnancy before week 20, without medical or external intervention. But, instead of receiving care, she was interrogated by police officers who quickly arrived at the health center. They told her that the D&C she had just undergone also served as evidence. She didn’t understand what they meant. She didn’t know she was being accused of a crime.
She spent three years attending court hearings. She was not convicted, but the process closed doors for her employment: she had a judicial record. “My life stopped,” she says today. Like her, thousands of others have been persecuted by the State after experiencing an obstetric event. “El Comercio Newspaper. All rights reserved.”
Between 2012 and 2022, the Public Prosecutor’s Office investigated 9,962 women for the crime of abortion. 99% were for self-induced abortion, the voluntary termination of pregnancy carried out by the woman herself, without medical assistance and, often, through unsafe methods. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), these procedures seriously endanger the health and lives of those who perform them. “El Comercio Newspaper. All rights reserved.”
