Inter-American Court of Human Rights finding El Salvador violated a woman’s human rights to health, a fair trial, life, and personal integrity under the American Convention on Human Rights when it placed her under criminal proceedings for aggravated homicide and detained her when she suffered an obstetric emergency.
As of September 2022, the State of El Salvador acknowledged the Court’s ruling and recognized Manuela’s family as victims of human rights violations. It has begun providing medical attention to Manuela’s parents and her two children. It has also begun looking for educational alternatives for Manuela’s children. The State has not yet complied with the other orders, nor has it provided direct reparations.
El Salvador’s complete ban and criminalization of abortion constitutes structural and intersectional discrimination. It affects women’s ability to live and to be healthy when they experience obstetric emergencies. Medical personnel are expected to police rather than care, with the threat they too could be prosecuted for involvement in an abortion. As noted by the collective amicus of several ESCR-Net members, “criminalization of abortion foreseeably and empirically enables patriarchal surveillance and punishment of women.”
Criminalizing abortion undermines women’s right to decide on their lives and their bodies, including during pregnancy, birth and the raising of a child. This is compounded when the women also experience poverty. Indeed, as noted in the referenced amicus, more than half of abortion reports from medical personnel come from public hospitals and the Salvadoran Social Security Institute, while no complaints are reported from private hospitals, clinics, and doctors. Thus, women without the economic resources to pay for private healthcare are at a greater disadvantage than those with the economic means to have discretionary health services provided in times of an obstetric emergency. The Court’s ruling is a step toward countering such violations and structural discrimination.
On the other hand, some feminist scholars, such as Rebecca Smyth, argue that the decision is a missed opportunity to advance sexual and reproductive health rights, since the Court did explicitly condemn abortion bans as incompatible with the American Convention. Thus, women face continued surveillance and prosecution for reproductive health care that the State views as illegal.
For their contributions, special thanks to ESCR-Net member: the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) at Northeastern University.
