On Christmas Day, news broke that El Salvador’s government had freed three Salvadoran women from prison — women whom the Associated Press and other news outlets reported as having been imprisoned “after suffering obstetric emergencies.” These women are part of a larger group of women known as “Las 17+,” whom abortion proponents claim have been wrongly imprisoned for abortions they didn’t have. Pro-abortion groups have been working to release these women from jail and legalize abortion in El Salvador, where abortion is only allowed when the life of the mother is at risk and in cases of rape (even though abortion is never medically necessary).
But many of these women were convicted of murdering their newborn babies — not of abortion — and photographic evidence proves this.
The three women released last month are only known to the press by their first names. “We presented ourselves at the prison in Zacatecoluca, and Karen, Kathy, and Evelyn left,” said Morena Herrera of the Citizen’s Group for the Depenalization of Abortion. “They are free and in their homes.” She said that petitions were pending at the country’s Supreme Court to commute the women’s sentences.
Paula Avila-Guillén, executive director of the Washington-based Women’s Equality Center, celebrated the news that these three women were freed. “We are grateful that our petitions are being heard and we trust that President [Nayib] Bukele is going to work to achieve freedom for the rest of the innocent women,” she said.
Warning: Graphic and disturbing images below.
Evidence of infanticide
However, evidence shared with Live Action News concerning Evelyn — and several other women who were previously released from prison — shows that they are not innocent. While these women may not have obtained illegal abortions, that is not the crime they were convicted of. They were in jail for violently killing their newborn babies.
“We do not have official information about the cases of Karen and Kathy,” Fundación Vida SV (Life Foundation) told Live Action News via email. “We only have the case of Evelyn Sánchez, who murdered her newborn baby with a stab wound to the chest. We also have the forensic photos of that case.”
Daughter of Evelyn del Carmen Sánchez Cabrera who confessed to killing the newborn. (VidaSV.org)
Fundación Vida SV reported on the case of Evelyn del Carmen Sánchez Cabrera, noting that her newborn daughter was 38 to 40 weeks when she was born and shortly after “was stabbed in the chest and neck.” The baby girl was then “thrown into a septic tank,” described as a pit. When Evelyn’s sister heard the baby crying, she climbed the ladder into the pit and found the baby wrapped in rags, and gave her to Evelyn. The grandmother then reportedly took the baby and began to clean her but the baby girl died shortly after. The cause of death was listed as “severe blunt-type traumatic brain injury plus perforation of the left lung caused by a blade.”
READ: Should being a woman allow you to escape prosecution for infanticide?
At the hearing, Evelyn confessed to the murder, saying she did it because her husband was abusive and she was traumatized. He didn’t want the baby and claimed the baby was not his. When the girl was born, her husband refused to look at her. That’s when Evelyn became upset and found the knife. She said at first she hadn’t admitted to killing the baby because she was so traumatized she couldn’t remember doing it, but that she was sorry. Evelyn was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Lies used in attempts to legalize abortion
Despite the evidence against Evelyn and other women imprisoned in El Salvador, American media outlets are using their stories to further the pro-abortion agenda. For example, in 2017, The Guardian shared the story of Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz, whom the news site claimed was in jail for a stillbirth because she didn’t receive prenatal care and the court likened that to murder. However, her baby was actually found in a septic tank and it was determined that he was born alive and had died from aspirating liquid and fecal matter.
American celebrities have also come out in support of the women, including pro-abortion actress Alyssa Milano — and in 2019, United States state legislators traveled to El Salvador to show their support for 13 of the women convicted of murder, all in the name of abortion expansion.
The Center for Reproductive Rights and Planned Parenthood are both helping to fund the effort to legalize abortion in El Salvador and use stories like this to claim that when abortion is criminalized, women are jailed for miscarriages. Evelyn’s conviction had nothing to do with abortion or miscarriage, but, in order to advance abortion “rights,” abortion proponents are now blurring the lines between infanticide and abortion. Legalized abortion does not prevent infanticide, as is evident by the cases of infanticide still occurring in the United States nearly 50 years after abortion was fully legalized.
What women in El Salvador need is for women’s rights organizations to focus not on legalizing abortion but on working to end the high poverty, crime, and rape rates in the country and give girls better access to education. Killing babies through abortion and sending women back into their horrific living conditions will not help anyone.
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