Rape survivor jailed for 30 years for having stillbirth to get retrial

Prosecutors claimed that she had had an abortion.

A rape survivor who was sentenced to 30 years in prison after having a stillbirth is getting a retrial. Evelyn Hernandez was 18-years-old when she was raped by a gang member in her native El Salvador. In 2016, she experienced a stillbirth in her home when her baby died of  'aspiration pneumonia', breathing in amniotic fluid as he left the womb. Hernandez said that she did not know she was pregnant at the time. Al Jazeera reports that doctors in the hospital Hernandez was admitted to contacted local authorities about the birth. The teenager was arrested on suspicion of procuring an abortion and later sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated homicide. El Salvador is one of six countries in Latin America where there is a complete ban on abortion under all circumstances. The others are Bolivia, Colombia, Haiti, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. This ban includes cases of rape, incest, and where there is a substantial risk to the life of the mother. Half of all maternal deaths in Colombia are due to illegal abortions, with one illegal abortion occurring for every three live births. Hernandez had served 33 months of her 30 year sentence before her sentence was annulled earlier this year. Dozens of women in El Salvador prisons have similar convictions.