Evelyn Hern News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Flaca was devoted to the MS13. But after suffering violence, abuse and rape, she turned to the one escape open to her: religion.

On Aug. 6 and 7, Salvadoran Americans will gather to confirm their collective identity through cultural and religious events in several U.S. cities.

Print About seven months into her pregnancy, Manuela passed out at her family home in a rural part of Morozán in northeast El Salvador. Her frightened relatives, who had no car, carried her in a hammock to a hospital many miles away. There, a physician asked the groggy woman, who was hemorrhaging and had lumps on her neck, for her husband. He’d migrated to the U.S., she said. The doctor called the police, assuming Manuela had cheated on her husband and induced an abortion to get rid of the evidence. An officer shackled her to the hospital bed.

Women in El Salvador celebrate the release of Evelyn Hernández, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a suspected abortion.Salvador Melendez / AP The voice that conveyed the information to Morena Herrera, from El Salvador, was foreign. “There are women who have been imprisoned for abortion,” the voice said, “and they’ll stay there for 30 years or more.” Herrera could not believe what she was hearing; under the criminal code, abortion carried a maximum sentence of eight years. Why such long prison terms? Morena Herrera asked the speaker, Donna Ferrato, how she...