A 19-year-old rape survivor has been sentenced to 30 years in prison in El Salvador after she suffered a stillbirth due to complications during her pregnancy. 
 
 Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz was convicted of "aggravated homicide" on Wednesday under what Amnesty International called El Salvador's "retrograde anti-abortion law". 
 
 Local rights groups say Hernandez Cruz had been raped months before going into labour, but had not told police out of fear. 
 
 She also said she did not know she was pregnant when she suffered severe abdominal pain and fainted in her bathroom in April 2016. 
 
 Hospital staff reported her to officials and she was charged after the body of the feotus was found in a toilet. 
 
 According to local media, Hernandez Cruz was convicted on grounds that she did not get prenatal care. Prosecutors also argued that the baby may have died after birth. 
 
 El Salvador is one of five countries where abortion is criminalised in all cases. 
 
 Under the country's law, which was implemented in 1998, women can be charged for murder and other related charges even when a pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or when the life or health of the pregnant woman or girl is at risk. 
 
 A woman can be punished by up to eight years, and in some cases women have been given sentences of up to 40 years if a judge determines "homicide" was committed. 
 
 Politics in El Salvador are highly influenced by the Catholic Church. 
 
 "El Salvador's anti-abortion law is causing nothing but pain and suffering to countless women and girls and their families," Amnesty's Americas Director Erika Guevara-Rosas said in a statement on Thursday. 
 
 "It goes against human rights and it has no place in the country or anywhere." 
 
 Human Rights Watch has also called the law a risk to "women's life and health". 
 
 Evelyn was sentenced 30 yrs for an obstetric emergency today. This is Justice in #ElSalvador When will it end? #Las17 pic.twitter.com/AK4xLhfJkC — Kristen Thompson (@herequeer) 5 July 2017 
 
 According to the Citizens Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion (CDFA), Hernandez Cruz's attorneys plan to appeal the ruling. 
 
 "Evelyn has been charged unfairly," defence attorney Dennis Munoz said, according to CDFA. 
 
 "It's a decision based on morality, not the law or justice." 
 
 Pressure mounts 
 
 El Salvador-based Alliance for Women's Health and Life documented at least 147 cases where women were charged with crimes under the abortion law between 2000 and 2014. 
 
 Among them was Maria Teresa Rivera, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for "aggravated homicide" in 2011 after having a stillbirth in her bathroom. She did not know she was pregnant at the time. 
 
 She was released in 2016 after serving four-and-a-half years. 
 
 Pressure from women and rights groups has mounted across Latin America for governments to relax abortion laws. 
 
 READ MORE: Dying woman denied abortion in El Salvador 
 
 Earlier this year, a bill was introduced in the El Salvador that would change the law to allow abortion in some circumstances, such as rape or when a woman's health was a risk. 
 
 The proposed legislation remains in committee and there has been no decision as to whether it will be sent to parliament. 
 
 In May, a group of UN experts urged El Salvador to "allow the termination of pregnancy in specific circumstances". 
 
 "The criminalisation of the termination of pregnancy imposes an intolerable cost on the women, their families and the society," the experts said. 
 
 "It restricts women's access to sexual and reproductive health services and information," they added, saying El Salvador's law is in "contrary to international human rights standards and violates the country's international obligations". 
 
 A protest against the court's decision in Hernandez Cruz's case is expected later on Friday. ||||| The sentence against a 19-year-old rape survivor of 30 years in prison on charges of “aggravated homicide” after she suffered pregnancy-related complications, is a terrifying example of the need for El Salvador to urgently repeal its retrograde anti-abortion law, Amnesty International said. 
 
 “El Salvador’s anti-abortion law is causing nothing but pain and suffering to countless women and girls and their families. It goes against human rights and it has no place in the country or anywhere,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International. 
 
 “The total ban on abortion in El Salvador violates women’s rights to life, health, privacy, due process and freedom from discrimination, violence and torture and other ill-treatment. All women and girls imprisoned for having had an abortion or experiencing obstetric emergencies should be immediately and unconditionally released, and the law must be repealed without delay.” 
 
 Evelyn Beatriz was admitted to a health center in Cojutepeque, north of San Salvador, on April 6, 2016 after she fainted at home. She was in labor but unaware she was pregnant. Local organizations say Evelyn had been raped months earlier but that she had not reported it to the authorities due to fear. Staff at the hospital reported Evelyn to the authorities. 
 
 She was taken to court and on July 5, 2017, was sentenced to 30 years in jail for an “aggravated homicide.” Her lawyers are appealing the sentence. 
 
 Background Information 
 
 Abortion has been criminalized in all circumstances in El Salvador since 1998, even when the pregnancy is the result of rape, incest, or when the life or health of the pregnant woman or girl is at risk. Many women and girls have lost their lives or been imprisoned due to the total abortion ban. 
 
 The current legal framework forces women and girls to resort to unsafe abortions to save their lives, and creates an atmosphere of suspicion around women who miscarry or experience other obstetric emergencies. As a result, women who experience complications during pregnancy have been prosecuted and convicted on charges of “aggravated murder” with sentences of up to 40 years’ imprisonment. ||||| A high school student was convicted on the grounds that failing to seek antenatal care amounted to murder, after giving birth in a bathroom in 2016 
 
 A teenage rape victim in El Salvador has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder after having a stillbirth, the latest in a long line of failures of justice against pregnant women in the Central American country. 
 
 
 
 El Salvador: where women are thrown into jail for losing a baby | Jonathan Watts Read more 
 
 Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz, 19, from a small rural community in Cuscatlán, eastern El Salvador, was convicted on the grounds that failing to seek antenatal care amounted to murder. 
 
 Hernandez, a high school student, gave birth into the toilet in April 2016 after falling ill with acute back and stomach pain. 
 
 Hernandez, who at the time was 18, was in her third trimester, but hadn’t realised that she was pregnant. She had been repeatedly raped by a gang member over several months as part of a forced sexual relationship. 
 
 Medical experts were unable to ascertain whether the foetus died in utero or in the moments after delivery. 
 
 The female judge accepted the prosecutor’s claims that Hernandez failed to seek antenatal care because she did not want the baby, and threw him into the toilet intending to kill him. 
 
 In sentencing, the judge went further and suggested that Hernandez could not have acted alone and that her mother may also be criminally responsible. 
 
 According to Morena Herrera, executive director of the Citizens’ Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion, the verdict was based on prejudices held by the prosecutor and judge. 
 
 “The judgment sentencing Evelyn to 30 years in prison shows how in El Salvador justice is applied without direct proof, without sufficient evidence that clarifies what a woman has done,” Herrera said. 
 
 El Salvador – one of five countries where abortion is illegal in all circumstances – has imprisoned dozens of mainly poor young women for murder after they suffered obstetric complications. 
 
 Abortion was criminalised in El Salvador 20 years ago, after legislators from across the political spectrum voted to strip women of their reproductive rights without any public debate or medical consultation about the consequences. The 1997 reform was passed after a shadowy campaign by a small group of powerful anti-choice groups linked to the Catholic church. 
 
 Hopes had been raised that the ban would be relaxed amid a groundswell of public and medical support for a parliamentary bill proposing to allow abortion in cases of rape or human trafficking; when the foetus is unviable; or to protect the pregnant woman’s health or life. 
 
 But four months after the parliamentary hearings ended, the bill remains in the hands of the legislative committee. The nine cross-party deputies have yet to decide whether the bill should be sent to the legislative assembly for a vote. 
 
 Hernandez insists that she only realised she had given birth after the fact, when her mother took her to hospital with severe abdominal pain. 
 
 The perils of pregnancy in a country where abortion is a crime - in pictures Read more 
 
 Hernandez was arrested after police found the deceased foetus in the toilet. She spent a week handcuffed to a hospital bed while being treated for severe anaemia and a urinary tract infection, and has been detained ever since. 
 
 Her lawyer condemned Wednesday’s decision as unjust and unlawful. 
 
 “The judge’s verdict doesn’t reflect the evidence presented in court. It’s a decision based on morality, not the law or justice,” said Dennis Munoz. 
 
 Lawyers will appeal the verdict, but Hernandez faces a long road to justice. 
 
 In 2014 the Citizens’ Group launched a campaign to seek clemency for 17 women wrongly jailed for murder who had exhausted all other legal appeals. Three of the women known as Las 17 have so far been freed; another will be released next year after her sentence was reduced from 30 to 15 years. At least five other women including Hernandez have since been jailed. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images 
 
 A teenager in El Salvador has been sentenced to 30 years in jail for aggravated homicide after delivering a stillborn baby in a toilet. 
 
 Prosecutors argued Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz had avoided antenatal care, tantamount to killing the child. 
 
 Her lawyers said she did not know she was pregnant and no crime had occurred. They said the pregnancy was as a result of repeated rapes she did not report. 
 
 The Central American country completely bans abortion in all circumstances. 
 
 Dozens of women have been imprisoned for the deaths of their foetuses in cases where they said they had suffered miscarriages or stillbirths. 
 
 In April last year, Ms Hernandez gave birth in the latrine of her home in a small rural community. She lost consciousness after losing large amounts of blood. 
 
 When her mother took her to hospital, leaving the baby's remains behind, Ms Hernandez was detained on suspicion of procuring an abortion. 
 
 Eleven days later she had an initial court hearing and she has been in custody since. 
 
 Her charge was changed to aggravated homicide when no evidence was found of her having had an abortion. 
 
 Although she was in the third trimester, Ms Hernandez said she had confused the symptoms of pregnancy with stomach ache because she had experienced intermittent bleeding, which she thought was her menstrual period. 
 
 She told the court: "I did not want to kill my son." 
 
 The judge did not believe she did not know she was pregnant. 
 
 Much of the case centred on whether the baby was dead at birth or died in the moments afterwards, but medical experts were unable to determine the answer definitively. 
 
 The human rights organisation Amnesty International condemned the sentence and Ms Hernandez's lawyer, Bertha de Leon, said she would appeal. 
 
 Efe Alberto Romero, from the Citizens' Group for the Decriminalisation of Abortion, said witnesses could not determine whether Ms Hernandez had intended for the baby to die, and that she had become pregnant due to repeated rapes in a forced sexual relationship. 
 
 Her lawyers said she had been too frightened to report the rapes. Some reports say the man who raped her was a gang member. 
 
 Pro-choice campaigners in El Salvador and around the world have argued that the country's absolute abortion ban criminalises people who have not sought abortions but have had natural miscarriages, as well as forcing women to carry pregnancies to term despite risk to their own lives. 
 
 Countries with an absolute ban on abortion: ||||| Notes: Data and designations from the United Nations Population Division as of 2013. Countries included are the 193 U.N. member states and three nonmember states: Cook Islands, Holy See and Niue. Data pertain to pre-secession Sudan. Data for South Sudan, a U.N. member state, are not available; South Sudan is shown as "data unavailable." Territories and overseas departments are shown as "no data" regardless of governing country's abortion laws. Many countries that allow abortions on request do not allow women to terminate their pregnancies after a certain point (e.g., 20 weeks).
– In what the Guardian is calling "the latest in a long line of failures of justice against pregnant women" in El Salvador, a 19-year-old was on Wednesday sentenced to 30 years in prison after a stillbirth. Per Al Jazeera, Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez Cruz was convicted of "aggravated homicide," accused by prosecutors of not seeking proper prenatal care. Hernandez says she hadn't known she was pregnant until, at the age of 18, she went into labor in a bathroom in April 2016 after severe stomach and back pain; her pregnancy reportedly came about after she'd been raped repeatedly by a gang member. Per the BBC, Hernandez's lawyers say she'd been too scared to ever report the rapes to police. She gave birth into a toilet, and prosecutors scoffed at her claims of ignorance, saying she knew about the pregnancy, didn't want the baby, and tried to kill him by tossing him into the toilet after he was born. Medical experts couldn't say for sure if the baby had been born deceased or died just after delivery. El Salvador is one of just six countries in the world that don't allow abortions under any circumstances. (The others are Chile, the Dominican Republic, Malta, Nicaragua, and Vatican City, per the Pew Research Center.) A parliamentary bill is now in circulation to ease the nation's abortion restrictions, but the bill is currently stuck in a legislative committee. The case is "a terrifying example of the need for El Salvador to urgently repeal its retrograde anti-abortion law," says Amnesty International in a release. (A tragic ending to one El Salvadoran woman's pregnancy.)