IT’S the country where women who have an abortion to save their life, or after rape, face up to 40 years in jail for homicide.

Even a miscarriage is considered a crime against an unborn child.

This is the reality of life in El Salvador, in Central America, where a conservative and hierarchical Catholic culture denies women sexual or reproductive choice.

media_camera Dirty, crowded conditions in El Salvador’s prisons. Picture: Meridith Kohut

media_camera Children under five live in the jails with their mothers. Picture: Meridith Kohut

There is virtually no access to sex education, contraception, quality reproductive health information or maternal healthcare — which can make pregnancy very dangerous for a young girl.

The harsh laws mean police, healthcare workers and courts often assume that any woman who loses a baby — whether through miscarriage, stillbirth or other complications — has deliberately killed it.

Women who have money for lawyers may escape the charges, but for poor people, the verdict is usually inevitable, according to Amnesty’s Americas director Erika Rosas.

On a visit to El Salvador’s Ilopango prison last month, she met many of these women, many of whom worked in sweatshops or as domestic servants and had been transported from their hospital beds to jail.

Inside, they face humiliation, attacks and abuse even from other inmates. “The first night I got there, I slept on the floor,” one woman told Erika. “The other prisoners chanted ‘baby killer, baby killer’. They told me they were going to kill me.”

Another added: “They call us ‘assassins’ or ‘animals,’ or they say we eat children. Several women have been beaten.”

These women’s families are usually too poor to bring them the supplies they need, so they are forced to do menial jobs for other prisoners to survive. The prisons are overcrowded and squalid.

Pregnant woman are forced to give birth in the cells and live there with their babies. If they already have small children, they have to bring them to prison too.

“It was pretty hard to manage my emotions while I was inside Ilopango,” said Erika. “I couldn’t help but feel utterly overwhelmed.

“The noise, the heat and the squalor were so intense. Tucked behind high walls and barbed wire in a dusty, crime-ridden El Salvador suburb, the jail was designed for 220 inmates. Today, it holds nearly 2000. Women sit, lie and sleep in every available square inch of space — piled into the narrow bunks, or curled up in the dirt underneath them. The lucky ones have mattresses. Those who don’t have to share threadbare blankets.

media_camera Women who have had abortions or miscarriages are beaten and called ‘animals.’ Picture: Meridith Kohut

media_camera Erika Rosas, Amnesty’s Americas director, with Colm O'Gorman, Amnesty Ireland director, outside Ilopango prison in San Salvador.

“The food in Ilopango is scarce and almost inedible. The drinking water smells of sewage and there’s rarely any water at all for washing. The state provides nothing more — no toilet paper, no soap or laundry powder. No sheets, towels or clothes.

“What shocked me the most were the children. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I discovered more than 100 tiny girls and boys, locked up alongside their mothers in these squalid conditions.

“I can’t think of a worse place for a child to start their life, not to mention the terrible trauma when they turn five and are removed from their mothers. Those who have no relatives able to care for them are locked up once again in state orphanages.”

Erika delivered a petition to El Salvador’s president signed by more than 300,000 Amnesty supporters and met with high-level government ministers to maintain the pressure on them to release these women and change the laws that put them in jail.

media_camera Countries where abortion is banned or only allowed to save a woman’s life. Picture: Centre for Reproductive Rights

Last year, the organisation succeeded in gaining the release of a woman named Guadelupe, but there are too many others like her, who are “victims of a bigoted and misogynistic legal system.”

And it’s not just El Salvador. Forty per cent of women of child-bearing age live in countries where abortion is banned, restricted or not accessible — some of which view miscarriages as an abortion.

A quarter of the world’s population resides in one of the 66 countries that prohibit abortion entirely or permit it only to save a woman’s life. These countries are mostly located in the Global South, with the exception of several in central and eastern Asia.

Last month, a 10-year-old girl in Paraguay was found to be pregnant after being raped by her stepfather. She arrived in hospital complaining of a stomach ache. The laws there prevent her from having an abortion, even though her health is in danger if the pregnancy progresses.

The World Health Organisation and health professionals around the world agree that pregnancy poses serious risks to young girls whose bodies are not fully developed. Their condemnation is truly appalling.

Donate to Amnesty’s Women’s Live Matter campaign to defend the rights and lives of women around the world, and join half a million people who have signed the petition to help the pregnant 10-year-old in Paraguay.

* This story is a composite of those told to Amnesty International by women and girls in El Salvador, who put their own lives in danger to speak to Amnesty. Amnesty can’t reveal their real names or their individual circumstances. All of the elements of Andrea’s story are based on actual events that happened to women and girls in El Salvador.

Originally published as ‘They call us assassins or animals’