Evelyn Hernández is acquitted for good

Justice in the Latin American state of Salvador, where abortion is prohibited, confirms his acquittal for good.

The Foundation for the Study of the Application of Law (Fespad), which defends Evelyn Hernández, indicated that the Court "confirms the acquittal pronounced by the court in Cojutepeque (east of the country) which recognized the innocence of Evelyn Hernandez. "

Evelyn Hernandez, 22, had been sentenced for "homicide" in July 2017 and to 30 years in prison at first instance, recalls TV5Monde. His crime: having miscarried.

On April 6, 2016, more precisely, then a teenager, she gave birth alone to a baby in a toilet. After being transferred to the city hospital, she is arrested and charged with murder. The young woman has always asserted her innocence and assured that her baby was stillborn.

For a moment, it had been said that Evelyn Hernandez was pregnant after a rape, but her lawyer then explained, without giving more details, preferring not to discuss these circumstances anymore at the request of the young woman who lives in a controlled district by the gangs and could be the object of reprisals, relates AFP, at the time.

The Salvadoran penal code provides for a sentence of two to eight years in prison for cases of abortion. The judges consider any loss of the baby to be "aggravated homicide", punished with 30 to 50 years' imprisonment.

The affair had shocked the country and the world.

Evelyn Hernandez was released on August 19, 2019.

It was not until February 2019 that the first instance sentence was quashed by the Supreme Court.

We are convinced that Evelyn is innocent. (…) justice and the law will really triumph in this country"Said Ana Martinez, one of the accused’s lawyers, some
time before the young woman's acquittal.

That same year, Amnesty International welcomed the news in a press release: "a resounding victory for women's rights in El Salvador" : "No woman should be unjustly charged with homicide for the simple fact of being confronted with an obstetric emergency". "Now that Evelyn has been acquitted, Amnesty International is calling on El Salvador to end once and for all the shameful discriminatory practice criminalizing women, and to immediately remove the harsh rules against abortion."

In 2019, sixteen women were in prison in El Salvador for abortions, reports Europe1.

The United Nations had already arrested El Salvador in 2014, announcing that the country's anti-abortion law violated the rights of women.

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Video by Clara Poudevigne