MEXICO CITY — A Salvadoran woman who spent almost 11 years in prison under El Salvador’s ban on abortion was freed Thursday after the country’s Supreme Court commuted her sentence. The case of the woman, Teodora del Carmen Vásquez, underscores the punishment faced by Salvadoran women convicted of homicide after losing a pregnancy. El Salvador forbids abortion under any circumstances, even to save the life of the mother. El Salvador is one of six countries in the Americas that ban abortion, and its courts enforce it with severe penalties on women and doctors. In 2013, the Supreme Court rejected a plea to terminate the high-risk pregnancy of a woman whose fetus suffered an abnormality that would not have allowed it to survive.

Source: New York Times February 15, 2018 23:31 UTC