This is so shocking to read. Here are the words of the judge who hears cases of women who are suspected of having an abortion.
Donna Ferrato for The New York Times
The Judge: Margarita Sanabria, a magistrate who has handled several abortion cases. "The more years one can send someone away for, the better it is for the prosecutors," she says.
The slippery slope toward gradually giving up women's rights, bit by bit.
In that country abortion is totally criminalized.
More than a dozen countries have liberalized their abortion laws in recent years, including South Africa, Switzerland, Cambodia and Chad. In a handful of others, including Russia and the United States (or parts of it), the movement has been toward criminalizing more and different types of abortions. In South Dakota, the governor recently signed the most restrictive abortion bill since the Supreme Court ruled in 1973, in Roe v. Wade, that state laws prohibiting abortion were unconstitutional. The South Dakota law, which its backers acknowledge is designed to test Roe v. Wade in the courts, forbids abortion, including those cases in which the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Only if an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother is the procedure permitted. A similar though less restrictive bill is now making its way through the Mississippi Legislature.
..."There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal. Like the woman I was waiting to meet.
Yes, they really have "forensic vagina inspectors."
Here is more from the New York Times in 2006. It was a chilling article called "Pro-Life Nation."
Pro-Life Nation
When I see the Republicans determined to make us a pro-life nation, and when I see the Democrats offering only token resistance....I think of how slippery the slope is becoming for women and their reproductive choices.
"When we get a call from a hospital reporting an abortion," said Flor Evelyn Tópez, "the first thing we do is make sure the girl gets into custody. So if there is not a police officer there, we call the police and begin to collect evidence." Tópez is a prosecutor in the district of Apopa in San Salvador, a part of town noted for its poverty, crime and gang violence. She is a compact and tense woman. She wears a beautiful silver cross around her neck with smaller matching crosses for earrings. Her hair is pulled into a tight narrow bun across her head, held in place by small plastic flowers. Her gaze beams from steady eyes, each haloed in cobalt mascara.
Donna Ferrato for The New York Times
The Doctor: Carmen Vargas, chief of OB/GYN residents at a maternity hospital in San Salvador. "When we see physical evidence," she says, "we
The Doctor: Carmen Vargas, chief of OB/GYN residents at a maternity hospital in San Salvador. "When we see physical evidence," she says, "we are required to report."
When the woman is first detained, the form of custody can vary. Wandee Mira, an obstetrician at a hospital in San Salvador, told me that she had seen "a young girl handcuffed to her hospital bed with a police officer standing outside the door." In El Salvador, a person accused of a major crime is typically held in jail in "preventative detention" until the trial begins. Tópez, who said she had prosecuted perhaps 10 or 15 abortion cases in the last eight years, said that she took the severity of the case into account and sometimes argued for "substitutive measures instead of jail," like house arrest, while the accused was awaiting trial.
The article from 2006 mentions Jim DeMint's odd statement....make the laws and worry about the consequences later.
DeMint was reluctant to answer Russert's repeated question: Would you prosecute a woman who had an abortion? DeMint said he thought Congress should outlaw all abortions first and worry about the fallout later. "We've got to make laws first that protect life," he said. "How those laws are shaped are going to be a long debate."
The law can order a forensic exam on the woman in El Salvador. That's the kind of thing that happens when you make the laws first and "worry about the fallout later."
"Yes, we sometimes call doctors from the Forensic Institute to do a pelvic exam," Tópez said, referring to the nation's main forensic lab, "and we ask them to document lacerations or any evidence such as cuts or a perforated uterus." In other words, if the suspicions of the patient's doctor are not conclusive enough, then in that initial 72-hour period, a forensic doctor can legally conduct a separate search of the crime scene. Tópez said, however, that vaginal searches can take place only with "a judge's permission." Tópez frequently turned the pages of a thick law book she kept at hand. "The prosecutor can order a medical exam on a woman, because that's within the prosecutor's authority," she said.
I am been thinking a lot about this slippery slope with all the events that are happening. I think when the rights of women are compromised, when the rights of the GLBT community are compromised...when both are asked to step back and be respectful of the new pro-life Democrats...then we truly are heading down that slippery slope. Ever try to scramble back up one of those slopes? Very hard to do.