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News > Latin America

Argentina Protests After Woman Imprisoned for Miscarriage

  • Women protest for their reproductive rights.

    Women protest for their reproductive rights. | Photo: AFP

Published 12 August 2016
Opinion

Protesters throughout Argentina are demanding the release of a young woman who was sentenced to eight years after suffering a miscarriage.

Argentines are taking to the streets on Friday as part of national protests demanding the immediate release of Belen, a 27-year-old woman, who was recently sentenced to eight years in prison after suffering a miscarriage.

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“Belen was sentenced without medical tests and her rights were violated,” Argentine lawmaker Myriam Bregman stated leading up to Friday’s protests.

The marches will take place in major cities, including Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Salta and San Miguel de Tucuman.

Friday’s demonstrations are being orchestrated by the Coalition for Belen’s Freedom, which is comprised of over 40 civil society organizations including organized labor groups, feminist collectives and political movements.

The charges against Belen stem back to March 2014 when she checked herself into a local hospital in San Miguel de Tucuman, a city in Northern Argentina, after experiencing pain in her abdominal area along with heavy vaginal bleeding.

Upon arrival, medical staff informed her that she was 22 weeks pregnant and experiencing a miscarriage.

Hours after her initial admission, hospital workers discovered a fetus in a hospital bathroom and later alleged that she had induced an abortion, rather than had a miscarriage.

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Belen has been in detention ever since.

However, Belen and her legal defense team deny the allegations and argue that there was a lack of evidence proving that Belen had inertially caused an abortion.

“My client has always been linked … with the so-called ‘found fetus,’despite the fact that according to the evidence the fetus was found before she entered the hospital and despite considerable confusion in the files over whether there were one, two or several fetuses, whether it was a male or female fetus … whether it belonged to someone else,” Belen's lawyer Soledad Deza stated earlier this year.

On April 19 Belen was found guilty of murder. Under Argentine law, abortions are considered illegal except in cases when the pregnancy poses a danger to the woman’s life or health, or when pregnancies are the result of rape, incest and other forms of abuse.

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