The world nonetheless to say is creeping back into floods of atrocities, when it comes to women and makes us all hit the blues, even at the mere thought of plights being suffered by women. At a time and decade, where we go through a mass amount of protests, policies and campaigns to keep the women safe and secure daily; this news of a 19 year old rape survivor being imprisoned over her stillbirth in school washroom has triggered a fresh set of controversy and debates.
When it comes to initiating strict laws, nothing beats El Salvador: A country that unarguably possesses the strictest set of laws on reproductive rights. In the recent past, Evelyn Beatriz Hernandez has been awarded an imprisonment of 30 years for having delivered her rapist’s stillborn. She was held guilty for faltering to turn to medical care that in El Salvador amounts to ‘an act of murder’.
The country makes it a strict no for abortion, and has been sending a lot of young women behind the bars post their miscarriages and complicacy in pregnancy. What cringes us to disappointment and agony is the laws and system that failed her when she was repeatedly raped by the members of a gang where she was lured and forced into for a sexual –relationship. Where was the country ‘strictness’ when she was failed and was being ‘used’ as a trash? Where exactly did the laws fled when a teenager who is supposed to grow up tuning to the colorful melodies of innocence and life was time after time, made to live a life of a ‘submissive slave’? And now when she emerged out of it, battling all the darkness by herself, instead of awarding her with encouraging words and being guided to the lighter side of life, the country wishes to inflict more pain to her; as if whatever she has been through was not enough.
At an age, where girls play with Barbie, drool over make-up boxes and enjoys a school- Evelyn had to undergo trauma. She is reported to have been unaware of her pregnancy, and isn’t that common enough? How many of us really understood the A-Z of pregnancy at the tender age of 19? Or put it in more appropriately, after having dealt some gory past, who would even think over going through some more of it by acting noral and seeking normal? The girl, instead of being tended to recovery; both physically and mentally would now have to sit at the dark dungeons, cursing life, womanhood and her existence in life.
The baby’s body being found in the school toilet was unable to be recognized if it died post delivery or died in the uterus itself, however the prosecutor has claimed that Evelyn had hurt the baby intentionally, to which the female judge believed and accepted all of it and sentenced her jail for a good long 30 years. This decision had birthed a whirlwind of activism and protests who are striving and battling for Evelyn’s justice.
What the country must do right away is to hear to both the sides, collect enough evidences before doling out a judgment so harsh, for a girl so tender. Let us all wish and pray for Evelyn and more such poor women all across who faces jail, upon being raped and tortured, for faltering in delivering healthy babies even at an age where is a ‘baby’ herself, and hope strongly that Karma does the needful to those who lured these young women into darkness and woes, while they roam around free, happy, clubbing or dancing around somewhere.
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