It is already a cliche to compare the treatment of women in whatever part of the world they happen to be under attack to the monstrosities imagined in The Handmaid’s Tale. (And when references to an unremittingly bleak feminist dystopia became banal, you are really in trouble.)
Then, a case like that of 20-year-old Imelda Cortez surfaces and its extremity, horror and breathtaking injustice blows everything else out of the water. What we are left with is the incontrovertible fact that, for many, it is a deeply dangerous thing to be a woman in 2018. This is what can, does and will continue to happen when the right to an abortion is removed entirely.
Cortez, from a rural area in El Salvador, is facing 20 years in jail after being charged with attempted murder. Why? Because she was repeatedly raped by her 70-year-old stepfather and became pregnant. She gave birth to a healthy baby, but stands accused of trying to end the pregnancy. She had been sexually abused by this man since she was 12 years old and didn’t know she was pregnant. Abortion in El Salvador has been illegal in all circumstances since 1998.
With the ongoing fear that Roe v Wade will be overturned following Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the US supreme court, El Salvador functions as a real-life Gilead, showing what is at stake. It also harks back to last year’s warnings from family planning campaigners about the “chilling impact” President Trump’s global gag rule (which bans any federally funded clinics from discussing abortion) would have on Latin America, where maternal mortality rates are disproportionately high and the trend is already towards a stricter interpretation of the law.
But this is not, and never has been, about reproductive rights alone. This is what it means for a right to be fundamental: dismantle it piece by piece, as the US administration is doing, and one by one, the other rights come toppling down. Once you have told a woman she has no right over her own body, everything else is up for grabs (to use a now loaded word). She can be raped. Imprisoned. Killed. It is no surprise that El Salvador, which has the strictest anti-abortion law in the world, is also among the most dangerous places to be a woman. Femicide is reportedly at epidemic levels.
Cortez has been detained for 18 months awaiting trial, which starts on Monday. Her stepfather is yet to be charged. This is an extreme case, but it is not the only one in a country where women accused of undergoing abortion can be sentenced for up to 50 years in jail. Earlier this year, Teodora del Carmen Vásquez was released from prison after serving 11 years of a 30-year sentence for having a stillbirth. We are talking about a world in which having a miscarriage makes you a criminal. What happens when the hatred of women becomes enshrined in law?
