Caution: The bottom of this article includes three graphic photographs of children killed after birth.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador, April 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- On April 15, the LA Times published a harrowing account of a woman from El Salvador who was freed by a congressional pardon after serving seven years of a thirty-year sentence merely for suffering a "miscarriage."

The abortion lobby has taken the cases of 17 Salvadorian women convicted of infanticide and turned them into a campaign for the legalization of abortion in that pro-life nation.

The LA Times article focused on the story of Guadalupe, a young Salvadorian woman who worked as a maid. Her employer, Katy Rivas, found her the morning of October 8, 2007, in her bed, bloody and shaking.

But the LA Times story tells a completely different story than what the court records show. According to the Times, Guadalupe had been raped by her employer, hid the pregnancy until it was too late and then was prevented from going to the hospital, and therefore lost the child. Also, in an inexplicable and unexplained logical leap, the Times blames the conviction of Guadalupe for the crime of infanticide on the prohibition of abortion in El Salvador.

Yet the court records, which include the coroner’s autopsy report, the testimony of the hospital's doctors and nurses, the records of the police who found the body of the dead child, and other compelling evidence, all tell a starkly different story.

According to court records, which can be accessed in Spanish here, when asked what was wrong by her employer, Guadalupe, alarmed, replied that she had heavy menstrual bleeding. She requested to stay at home that day but assured her employer, Ms. Rivas, that she was fine and that she should go to work.

When Ms. Rivas returned home later that day, she found young Guadalupe still bleeding yet refusing to go to the hospital. Alarmed, Ms. Rivas finally convinced Guadalupe to be taken to the San Bartolo Hospital.

At the hospital, Guadalupe was immediately taken to the emergency room where she continued to insist to the nurses that it was nothing more than a heavy period. The attending physician, Dr. Julio Brizuela, testified at the subsequent trial that Guadalupe stated at first that the bleeding was natural. After having examined her, however, the doctor could tell her bleeding was not normal, and he questioned Guadalupe again. She finally admitted to giving birth to a child who, according to her, "did not cry," and thinking that he was dead she had decided to bury the child.

But later that day, Guadalupe changed her story once again, admitting to her employer that the dead child was in a plastic bag in her bed. Upon their return to the home, the baby was found inside of a bag in Guadalupe's bed naked and bloody.

The autopsy revealed that the baby was 38 weeks and was born alive. The coroner's conclusion was clear: the child was either killed or left to die.

Because the mother lied repeatedly, had hidden the pregnancy and childbirth and then killed or left the baby to die, she was convicted of murdering the child and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

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Abortion was never at issue in this tragic case. Guadalupe was never charged with the crime of abortion, something which was erroneously repeated ad nauseum as national and international abortion advocates attempted to manipulate this case for their ends. Guadalupe was charged and convicted of aggravated murder.

Nevertheless, seven years later, at the request of local pro-abortion feminist groups, the FMLN and GANA party congressmen granted Guadalupe a controversial pardon. The congressional pardon did nothing to contest the ruling of the trial court, it simply allowed Guadalupe to leave prison after serving 7 years of the 30 year sentence.

Aside from the blatant manipulation of the case to make it seem like the country's anti-abortion laws were somehow to blame, the way in which the pardon was granted was itself scandalous.

According to statements from the ARENA party congressman, and current president of the Salvadorian Justice Commission, Ernesto Angulo, the congressional pardon document was actually a forgery. Mr. Angulo made an official complaint after finding that the many signatures of members of his party had been doctored and added to the pardon. Another congressman, David Reyes, joined Mr. Angulo in filing the official complaint, according to the Salvadorian procedures, requesting an explanation from the rapporteur of the document, Deputy Sandra Salgado. However, the President of the Assembly did not reply to that request because, noting quite conveniently, that Ms. Salgado was not present to explain how those signatures appeared on the document.

The case of Guadalupe and of the 17 women is shocking on many levels. Primarily they are shocking in and of themselves for the depraved cruelty with which these women murdered their newborn children. But perhaps even more egregious is the complete lack of conscience from the abortion lobby who attempted to convert murderers of infants into abortion martyrs and the American mainstream press which, just as it had done with the fake Rolling Stone rape story at University of Virginia, is now attempting to bring its fraudulent war on women to El Salvador.

LifeSiteNews has obtained actual photographs from the court records of several of the children murdered by the 17 women who have been made into martyrs of the pro-abortion movement. They show children with knife wounds, severe abrasions, and strangulation. The pictures speak for themselves and should shame all of those trying to glorify the women who committed these heinous crimes in order to promote the legalization of abortion.

Caution: Graphic photographs of babies killed after birth.