The Free Women from Guanajuato and the Consequences of Draconian Anti-Abortion laws
An Interview with Veronica Cruz Sanchez by Marta Nunez
Translated by Lucía Marinas
In the vast majority of Latin American countries, reproductive rights are far from being a reality, and in Mexico, women are still denied their right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, with the exception of Mexico City and the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s party has introduced a bill to decriminalise abortion nationwide for up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. However, the conservative opposition is strong and the Catholic Church leads the counter-abortion movement.
One of the worst injustices is the prosecution of women that have suffered miscarriages and are imprisoned as if they had committed a crime.
FILIA interviewed Verónica Cruz Sánchez, Director of LAS LIBRES DE GUANAJUATO (Free [Women] from Guanajuato), a women’s organisation that has managed to free unfairly imprisoned women, and works tirelessly to promote women’s rights to end an unwanted pregnancy.
Guanajuato is a central Mexican state with a population of over 6 million inhabitants (2020), with 54% living below the standards of moderate poverty and 22.79 % being in absolute poverty. (Mexican Census, 2000). In the rural environment and around the cities, people live in deplorable conditions.
Between January and October 2020 at least 3185 women were murdered in Mexico and 929 in Guanajuato. During this time span, Guanajuato had the highest number of female victims of homicide Guanajuato (State Attorney General’s Office).
This background information gives us a picture of poverty combined with violence, and in addition, an intentional silencing of women’s voices. Women protesting against sexual violence in Mexico, and specifically in Guanajuato, has become a very risky business. On many occasions, police officers resort to the use of sexual violence as a tactic to “discipline” them for behaving contrary to gender stereotypes: “Women should stay at home and not go out looking for trouble” or the infamous common say “Calladitas se ven más bonitas” [When silent, women look prettier].
Verónica Cruz Sánchez was the first Mexican human rights activist to be awarded the Defender of Human Rights award from Human Rights Watch. In 2006, she was awarded the honour for her work with women's right to access legal and medical services. She has brought public awareness to the plight of predominantly uneducated, indigenous and impoverished women who are imprisoned for abortion and miscarriage in Mexico. Verónica has worked to decriminalize and destigmatize women's decisions over their bodies and reproductive rights. She is founder of Las Libres, an organization dedicated to the defense, guarantee and respect of human rights for women in the state of Guanajuato and across Mexico.
Marta Núñez -. I understand that Mexico does not have a common approach to abortion in all its territory. Could you explain a bit more about this situation?
Verónica Cruz Sánchez - Abortion is legal in Mexico only in cases of rape. However, as it is a federal country, each of the 32 states has its own legislation, so there are different conditions for a legal abortion in each of the states. In 29 states abortion is allowed in rape cases, in 23 if there is a risk of the mother’s death, in 16 for severe abnormalities of the new-born; 16 others allow it when there is a risk to health, 15 for non-consensual artificial insemination, 2 for economic reasons - only 2 others solely based on the woman's choice (Mexico City and Oaxaca). So, in general, in every one of these territories, abortion is considered a crime.
Nevertheless, there are women imprisoned for having miscarriages, premature births, or obstetric emergencies. None of these events should be considered a crime, but these women are being sentenced for homicide, infanticide, filicide, and omission of care with prison sentences from 8 to 40 years. These women are mostly poor, indigenous or from rural, marginalised areas, where health services are non-existent. Up to now, we have counted approximately 200 women in similar situations.
MN - How did you start campaigning for those women unfairly imprisoned?
"Because Maternity is not an Imposition", "Legal interruption of unwanted pregnancy", "To decide is not a crime"
© LasLibres
VCS -In 2002 I met Araceli, a woman who had a miscarriage and was sentenced to 22 years for homicide. She, amongst 8 other women, was in a prison called “Puentecillas” in the city of Guanajuato. After a tough search for proof that there were women criminalised for abortion across all female prisons in Guanajuato (10), we finally found them and the official data. From 2006 to 2008 we worked very intensely with these imprisoned women, along with a team of lawyers and psychologists, to help them rebuild their life, and learn about their cases and rights. When we collected all the necessary information, we recorded all violations to their human rights, in relation to their cases and from the state. In most cases, evidence had been fabricated, and the system had taken advantage of them simply because they did not have enough resources to defend themselves. Then, we made their cases public in a press release that caused a big scandal locally and nationally. Our intention was to cause a social outrage by telling these stories of injustice; we never imagined the social and media pressure would take us so far. On the 7th of September of 2010, after legislative reform, 9 women were freed; making this a precedent so that no more women are sentenced to prison for any issue related to abortion. We also learnt that this was not only happening in the state of Guanajuato, but throughout the country. After the public scandal, women started to contact us from different prisons with similar stories, and since then we have continued defending and freeing women in Mexico.
Today we consider that it is important to fight hard so that abortion is removed from all 33 penal codes of the country (one federal and 32 statal).
MN-. What is the status of your organisation (NGO, civil association, etc.)?
"In Guanajuato raped women are sent to prison! I am FREE and I decide about my body!!"
© LasLibres
VCS-Las Libres is a Civil Association established on the 7th of November 2000, to support female victims of rape and guarantee their right to legal abortion. In 2000, the local congress of Guanajuato proposed to eliminate the exception of rape from the abortion law in the penal code. We started a historic movement that stopped this law to be established. Since then, we have adapted two main strategies. On one hand we investigate, document, defend and litigate these cases throughout the whole country. On the other hand, we drive the building of social networks so that women see abortion as their human right, while following the WHO clinical guidelines for safe medical abortion at home.
MN What are your mission and objectives?
VCS-Our mission is to build equal relationships between women and men, and to guarantee women’s access to their sexual and reproductive rights and a life free of violence. Our main objectives are to decriminalise, legalise, destigmatise abortion, and build the social network needed for women to feel safe.
MN-. What actions do you take to achieve such goals?
VCS-We educate women and girls on their rights and how to practice, defend and demand them. We support victims of violence to access justice and reparations. We help women to access safe abortion practices. And finally, we push socially and legally for the development of public policies that support women’s rights.
MN- How do you see the future in relation to these objectives?
VCS- For women, we envision more and more support for them to learn their rights, build more safe spaces, and pushing our networks to the whole of Mexico and other countries in similar situations. In the context of the pandemic, and taking advantage of the current prevalent digital communications, we are working on developing technologies, like apps or websites, to make it easier for women to access to safe abortions. As for the governments, our hopes are very low, as institutions are represented by worse politicians whose priorities do not include women’s rights.
MN-. Is there anything you think is crucial about this fight and must be known in the UK?
VCS-In Mexico we are improving faster than other countries with this issue. More and more, women and girls have access to information on the internet about science, medicine, and technology, as well as women’s groups. The social stigma around abortion is disappearing, as this topic is constantly present in protests, social media, and feminist collectives.
MN. Where could we follow your work in social media? FILIA has an incredible network of women, not only in the UK, but internationally. Is there anything we could do to contribute to your campaign?
VCS-Giving visibility to our struggle by learning about it through our website and disseminating the information through social media.
We have made a documentary “Las Libres: The history continues…”in 2014 that shows how in the state of Guanajuato (México) women’s rights are being systematically violated by extreme draconian laws.
In addition, the short-film “El imparable acompañamiento” (Nonstop Support) and the photography show “Se puede, se hace”. All this information can be accessed on our webpage, where we have translation facilities.
MN- Thank you Verónica for speaking to FILIA about such an urgent issue that concerns Mexican women whose voices have been silenced. Let’s keep in touch about the impressive work of Las Libres.
Facebook page: Las Libres
Twitter: @LasLibres
http://www.laslibres.org.mx