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“Mere suspicion of possible abortion immediately makes [women] guilty, presumption of innocence gets erased,” said Guillen, who worked closely with Hernández’s defense team. “When police were notified, they shackled her to a hospital bed and interrogated her.”

Hernández spent 33 months in prison and was released in February after a successful appeal. In an attempt to retry Hernández on the same charges, prosecutors last week fought to increase her sentence to 40 years, arguing that the woman had lied about being raped and should have known she was pregnant.

The woman bled frequently and faced other obstetric ailments during her pregnancy, Guillen said, which she confused with her period.

“[The judge] simply couldn’t see enough evidence to be convinced she had done anything to commit any crimes,” Guillen said. “It was the right thing to do.”

Several Latin American countries have stringent abortion laws, including Argentina, where an 11-year-old rape victim was forced to give birth in February even though the girl had repeatedly asked for an abortion. But no restriction is more severe than El Salvador’s absolute ban, which has been in place since the late 1990s and applies even if a mother’s life is in danger.

Guillen and other advocates say the ban is applied arbitrarily and specifically targets poor women in El Salvador who lack access to quality medical care. Even in instances of miscarriage, prosecutors in the country seek homicide or manslaughter charges on top of abortion-related counts.