Around the world, religious nutters want to ban abortion. What does that mean? In Ireland, it means women who miscarry die in agony, denied the basic medical care which would save their life. And in El Salvador, it means women being jailed for miscarriages:
Glenda Xiomara Cruz was crippled by abdominal pain and heavy bleeding in the early hours of 30 October 2012. The 19-year-old from Puerto El Triunfo, eastern El Salvador, went to the nearest public hospital where doctors said she had lost her baby.
It was the first she knew about the pregnancy as her menstrual cycle was unbroken, her weight practically unchanged, and a pregnancy test in May 2012 had been negative.
Four days later she was charged with aggravated murder - intentionally murdering the 38-to-42 week foetus - at a court hearing she was too sick to attend. The hospital had reported her to the police for a suspected abortion.
After two emergency operations and three weeks in hospital she was moved to Ilopango women's prison on the outskirts of the capital San Salvador. Then last month she was sentenced to 10 years in jail, the judge ruling that she should have saved the baby's life.
She's not the only victim of this barbaric law. El Salvador has jailed 29 women for murder by miscarriage in the last decade, all but one of them the victim of naturally occurring complications. Its as unjust as it is barbaric. But that's what the Christian baby-cult means: punishing women, regardless of culpability.
