W Radio reports that the Mexican Supreme Court ordered on Wednesday the release of Adriana Manzanares Calletano, a member of the Me’paa indigenous group who served seven out of a 22-year prison sentence for homicide in a Guerrero jail after suffering a miscarriage. Manzanares, who was 20 and the mother of two children at the time of the sentence, had no medical assistance during the birth, and was later accused of having aborted the child. She was convicted after the prosecution used pulmonary docimasia – a discredited form of determining whether premature births were induced or happened spontaneously – as evidence against her.
The case will be reviewed by the court, which ordered her release after it determined that she had not had a fair trial. Manzanares’ release follows that of 9 other women in 2010 under similar conditions, whose cases were taken on by the Public Interest Clinic of the Center of Investigation and Economic Research (CIDE) and the Free People Center. Excelsior notes that Manzanares was beaten after her conviction at the hands of a community assembly in Ayutla de los Libres after the assembly determined her guilty of both adultery and homicide.
Abortion is illegal everywhere in Mexico except Mexico City, where it has been legal during the first three months of pregnancy since 2007. That puts the capital among the vanguard of Latin America on the issue; it’s only permitted in Cuba – where it has been legal since 1979 – and Uruguay – which legalized it in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy just this past May. It is outlawed under any circumstances in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.
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