A sign greets visitors arriving at a sun-filled two-story house in El Salvador\u2019s capital.
\u201cYou must enter smiling,\u201d it says. \u201cBefore you come in, you will find an invisible bag where you can leave your sorrows. When you leave, you can decide whether to take them with you.\u201d
Teodora V\u00e1squez knows the women seeking shelter, support or a fresh start here often have decades of sorrows weighing on them. And she\u2019s propped up this sign beside a green plastic turtle near the front door as a first step toward the healing she hopes they\u2019ll start to find within these walls.
It\u2019s been 25 years since El Salvador made abortion illegal in all circumstances, eliminating any exceptions. And it\u2019s been nearly as long since lawmakers passed a constitutional amendment declaring that life begins at conception.
V\u00e1squez was among more than 180 women who advocates say were unjustly convicted of crimes after suffering obstetric emergencies, including miscarriages and stillbirths, in the years since the revised penal code and constitutional amendment went into effect. Activists warn that these women\u2019s experiences show how dangerously far criminalizing abortion can go.
V\u00e1squez was convicted of aggravated homicide and imprisoned for more than 10 years before El Salvador\u2019s Supreme Court commuted her 30-year sentence in 2018.
The overcrowded Ilopango women\u2019s prison where she lived for over a decade seems like a world away from the airy garden courtyard V\u00e1squez points out as she gives a tour of her home via Zoom.
But she says the experiences she endured behind bars \u2014 and how important it is to help others who\u2019ve gone through the same thing \u2014 are never far from her mind.
This house isn\u2019t just where V\u00e1squez lives. It\u2019s also the headquarters of Mujeres Libres El Salvador, an organization she founded.
The group\u2019s name means \u201cfree women\u201d in Spanish. And legally speaking, that\u2019s exactly what V\u00e1squez and the four other people who live here are. So, too, are the dozens of other women who\u2019ve traveled hours to spend their weekends attending workshops here.
Like V\u00e1squez, in the last few years, courts have ordered their release from prison. But since then, there\u2019s another kind of freedom that\u2019s been harder to come by.
\u201cWe\u2019ve been living through a double conviction. First, the one the judge gave us,\u201d V\u00e1squez says, \u201cthen the one society gave us. And we call that a life sentence. Because from the moment you entered prison, for your entire life, you are going to have this. \u2026 You are going to die and they are going to remember you because you were a prisoner.\u201d
In recent years, the cases of V\u00e1squez and other women have spurred global protests, appeals from the UN\u2019s top human rights official and attention from Hollywood stars.
But as recently as 2021, Salvadoran lawmakers voted to uphold the country\u2019s abortion prohibitions. And within the socially conservative country, the ban is popular among many Catholic and evangelical Salvadorans.
That, V\u00e1squez says, is one reason why she and other women keep retelling the stories they wish they could forget. Now, as part of Mujeres Libres, V\u00e1squez says they aren\u2019t just trying to heal themselves. They have a much larger goal, too.
\u201cWe want to make sure our history doesn\u2019t repeat itself in future generations,\u201d she says.
\u2018The extreme injustice jumps off the page\u2019
The sharp pain hit V\u00e1squez suddenly at the school caf\u00e9 where she worked in July 2007. She was nine months pregnant at the time. She already had a young son, and V\u00e1squez says she was looking forward to giving birth to a baby girl.
\u201cI wanted my daughter. I had bought clothes for her,\u201d V\u00e1squez says.
As the pain intensified, she called 911 multiple times asking for help. V\u00e1squez says the help she needed never came.
She says she fainted in a bathroom and was unconscious when she gave birth.
\u201cWhen she regained consciousness, she was bleeding profusely and the baby was dead,\u201d Amnesty International said in a 2016 summary of her case.
When police finally arrived, they took her into custody.
V\u00e1squez says that initially she, like others, was accused of having an abortion.
\u201cThen they changed the classification to aggravated homicide,\u201d she says. \u201cThat means that, to the Salvadoran state, our children were born alive and we killed them.\u201d
In January 2008, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
V\u00e1squez\u2019s case and others like it caught the attention of Jocelyn Viterna, a professor of sociology and chair of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University who has spent decades studying the impact of abortion restrictions in El Salvador.
\u201cOnce you start looking into these cases, the extreme injustice jumps off the page,\u201d Viterna says. \u201cThese women had not done anything to break the law, and yet at every step the legal system was set up to prosecute them.\u201d
Many cases, Viterna says, involve impoverished women who were alone when they went into labor, and whose babies were either stillborn or died shortly after birth due to circumstances beyond their control. Subsequent autopsies, Viterna says, often relied on the so-called \u201clung float test,\u201d a controversial method for investigating allegations of infanticide that dates back to the 17th century and has been discredited by many medical experts.
Advocates in the United States warn that the Salvadoran women\u2019s cases are a telling example of the kinds of prosecutions they fear will intensify in the wake of last year\u2019s Supreme Court ruling overturning the federal constitutional right to an abortion.
\u201cThat is just so dangerous,\u201d says Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of Pregnancy Justice, a New York-based organization that defends people in the US facing criminal charges for pregnancy outcomes. \u201cThe idea that you could use forensics that are pseudoscience to convict women in these tragic cases is really, really concerning.\u201d
Some of them met behind bars
It took time for the women to find each other inside the prison where many of them were held.
The crime they were convicted of \u2014 killing their babies \u2014 carried such a stigma that they dared not mention it aloud. Those who did were beaten by fellow inmates.
\u201cWe were already friends, but nobody was talking about our cases,\u201d V\u00e1squez says in \u201cFly So Far,\u201d a 2021 documentary that follows her story.
It was only after a group of human rights lawyers met with them together that they realized the connections their cases shared. As advocacy groups mounted protests calling for their freedom, the documentary details how the group of detained women nominated V\u00e1squez to be their spokesperson.
And as she fought for own conviction to be overturned, she also spoke out about the others\u2019 plight.
\u201cI have rarely been as moved as I was by their stories and the cruelty they have endured,\u201d then-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra\u2019ad Al Hussein said after meeting V\u00e1squez and several other women in 2017. \u201cIt only seems to be women from poor and humble backgrounds who are jailed, a telling feature of the injustice suffered.\u201d
The UN official called for authorities to review the cases.
But within El Salvador, a largely Catholic and evangelical Christian country, some viewed the women\u2019s accounts with skepticism and hostility.
As international pressure mounted, the then-head of El Salvador\u2019s Institute of Legal Medicine told reporters that the women, who became widely known as \u201cThe 17,\u201d were in prison because they were accused of infanticide, not obstetric emergencies or abortions \u2014 a point he reiterated in a recent interview with CNN.
Dr. Jos\u00e9 Miguel Fort\u00edn Maga\u00f1a, a psychiatrist who resigned from his post directing the institute in 2015, says he stands by the scientific analysis in autopsies his staff conducted. Critiques of the testing used, he says, fail to take into account that additional analysis was done.
\u201cThese cases became emblematic because it got political. And when something becomes political the truth is no longer sought after,\u201d he told CNN.
A month after V\u00e1squez met with the UN\u2019s top human rights official in 2017, an appeals court in El Salvador upheld her conviction. Again, the UN\u2019s human rights office weighed in, calling El Salvador\u2019s laws \u201cdraconian.\u201d
Two months later, 11 justices from El Salvador\u2019s Supreme Court commuted V\u00e1squez\u2019s sentence, saying evidence in the case did not prove that she had taken any action to end her baby\u2019s life.
She was released in February 2018 after more than 10 years behind bars. A crowd of cheering supporters awaited her outside the prison gates. Her parents and her then-teenage son stood among them, waiting to embrace her.
But even after winning her hard-fought release, finding true freedom was harder than she expected.
A search for support led to a surprising realization
V\u00e1squez only had a third-grade education when she entered prison. During her years behind bars, she devoted herself to education, earning her high school diploma. But she says she quickly realized the years of classes she\u2019d taken in prison weren\u2019t enough to help her find her footing once she was released.
\u201cI didn\u2019t even know how to use a computer,\u201d she says.
V\u00e1squez signed up for a computer course and enrolled in college soon afterward. But she says she still found it hard to reenter society.
\u201cI started to think, if I\u2019m dealing with this, how are the women who were released before me?\u201d V\u00e1squez says. \u201cWhat have they done to make it?\u201d
V\u00e1squez started searching for them to find out. Months after her release from prison, she brought together 16 women and began interviewing them about their experiences. She was surprised to learn that many were struggling even years after their release.
Some were shunned by their families. Many couldn\u2019t find jobs because of their criminal records.
\u201cThey started to tell me about very difficult situations, and some of these women had already been out of prison for eight years. And I said to myself, \u2018Let\u2019s do something. Let\u2019s change this reality, not just for us, but for all the other women who are going to come out of prison,\u2019\u201d V\u00e1squez recalls.
And from there, she says, the idea of Mujeres Libres was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As she walks the halls of the group\u2019s headquarters in San Salvador and shows the space to CNN during a Zoom interview, V\u00e1squez points proudly to rooms with bright blue bunk beds. For some who are originally from more rural parts of the country, the house is a temporary stopping point when they\u2019re in town for appointments. For others, it\u2019s a place to live so they can work in the city, where jobs are more plentiful.
During the week, the house is quiet and calm, but on weekends V\u00e1squez says it\u2019s a hive of activity. Women travel hours from different parts of the country for counseling sessions and workshops on topics like playwriting and women\u2019s rights.
With each passing year, the number of potential members seems to grow.
Since 2009, more than 60 women who were prosecuted after suffering obstetric emergencies have been released, according to the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion in El Salvador.
\u201cI\u2019ve been learning to open up,\u201d says 35-year-old Jacqueline Castillo, who says she was wrongfully convicted of attempted homicide after her baby was born in a latrine during an obstetric emergency. \u201cIt\u2019s helped me be able to let go of some things.\u201d
Castillo, who was released from prison last year after serving more than 10 years of her 15-year sentence, says she\u2019s been taking computer classes at the Mujeres Libres house, and also gaining confidence to start making plans for her future. She\u2019s a domestic worker now but hopes one day to start her own restaurant.
\u201cIt\u2019s very beautiful, because you can let go of things and concentrate, and then you now have something else in your mind, something positive,\u201d she says. \u201cYou can learn something, and then you can share it with someone else.\u201d
The women are students. They also see themselves as teachers
Jocelyn Viterna points at an anatomy chart on her computer screen as V\u00e1squez and other members of Mujeres Libres look on.
The Harvard professor has been studying these women\u2019s cases and the impact of El Salvador\u2019s abortion restrictions for years. But on Wednesday evenings this fall, she\u2019s serving in another role: their teacher.
At the request of V\u00e1squez and other members of Mujeres Libres, Viterna is leading a weekly Zoom course about gender, sexuality and reproductive health.
Today\u2019s lessons: the anatomy of the female sexual and reproductive system, followed by explanations of how this anatomy connects with sexual pleasure.
\u201cWhat do you think?\u201d Viterna asks the class as she concludes her presentation. \u201cWhy do you think so many people see it as shameful to talk about this?\u201d
V\u00e1squez is the first to raise her hand with an answer. \u201cI think it has a lot to do with our culture, and what our parents teach us,\u201d she says.
Today V\u00e1squez and the other women are students. But soon they hope to be teaching these kinds of lessons, too, as they travel around the country and speak with Salvadoran youth in a series of presentations scheduled to begin next month.
The group plans to screen the documentary about their experiences, perform a play and lead discussion sessions.
V\u00e1squez says she\u2019s already seen signs of a shift in El Salvador. Fewer women who have obstetric emergencies are being prosecuted, she says, after a 2021 Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling ordered the government to grant professional secrecy protections to doctors. That change means doctors are no longer required to report possible abortion attempts. Human rights groups had argued that medical personnel previously felt pressured to report patients fearing that they would be charged or sanctioned themselves.
Advocates also hope another case pending before the court could clear the way for legalizing abortion in some instances in El Salvador and other Latin American countries that criminalize it.
But even if El Salvador\u2019s laws change tomorrow, V\u00e1squez says there\u2019s still more work to do.
She sees a clear connection between the rarity of lessons like the ones Viterna is teaching them and the decisions that sent her and so many others to prison.
\u201cWe have to start educating the population, because that is how people are sensitized and how they take action and we get rid of ignorance,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that is how things will change.\u201d
From prisoners to \u2018women of steel\u2019
V\u00e1squez knows not everyone will welcome their message. Last year, she says, anti-abortion protesters tried to block screenings of the documentary about the group. The protest campaign spurred a flood of threats after her contact information was leaked online, she says.
\u201cThey kept saying they were going to report me so that I would shut up,\u201d V\u00e1squez says.
But V\u00e1squez says she\u2019s determined to keep speaking out.
Why spend so much time talking about a painful part of her past? And why take the risks more public exposure could bring?
\u201cWe aren\u2019t doing this for ourselves,\u201d V\u00e1squez says. \u201cWhat more can happen to us? We already went to prison. We already paid for crimes that we didn\u2019t commit. We are here, but sincerely we are doing this because we want at least the youth of future generations to have better lives.\u201d
As part of this year\u2019s upcoming speaking tour, the group will be performing a play they\u2019ve written dispelling myths around menstruation.
V\u00e1squez is excited to see how audiences respond. She\u2019s already seen first-hand how transformative taking the stage can be.
Last year they put on another play, \u201cMujeres de Acero,\u201d Spanish for \u201cWomen of Steel.\u201d V\u00e1squez tears up whenever she watches a video of the performance, which ends with the women waving scarves to mimic butterflies\u2019 wings fluttering as they circle the stage.
She and the other women, she says, have found strength in each other and made a space for themselves.
That, V\u00e1squez says, is true freedom \u2014 the kind that no one can take away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n