Thomson Reuters Foundation: El Salvador set to reopen abortion trial of teen rape victim
“A teenage rape victim in El Salvador who was convicted for murdering her child and jailed for nearly three years after a stillbirth will face a retrial next week, her lawyers said on Wednesday. Evelyn Beatríz Hernández was handed a 30-year prison sentence in 2017 for aggravated murder by a female judge who ruled the teenager had induced an abortion, which is a crime under any circumstance in the Central American nation. Her sentence was annulled in February in an appeal before El Salvador’s top court, marking a victory for the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion (CDFA), a local rights group pushing to free about 20 jailed women with similar cases. … Pro-choice activists say Hernandez’s retrial is an important test case that could signal the stance on abortion taken by El Salvador’s new president, Nayib Bukele, who took office in June. Bukele has said he believes abortion should be allowed only if the mother’s life is at risk…” (Moloney, 7/10).