Where Abortion Is Illegal

A visit to a prison where women jailed for abortion and miscarriage participate in a program to teach them how to paint nails

In 2017, I reported from Illopango prison in El Salvador, interviewing women who had been imprisoned for abortion and miscarriage. In light of the Supreme Court's seemingly gleeful effort to overturn the right for a woman to make choices about her own body in the US, I wanted to share my experience at the prison. It was surreal for me to witness women imprisoned for abortion and miscarriage participate in a rehabilitation program that taught them to paint nails and give facials.

Beyond the barbed wire-topped fence, hundreds of women sat together in groups, giving each other manicures and pedicures, facials, massages, haircuts, and makeovers. They massaged scalps, applied deep conditioner, whipped up homemade face masks, and picked out nail polish colors. It was a sweltering day in August 2017, and sweat ran down 482 makeup-lined faces as some women bent over the feet of others, putting the final touches on pedicures in which each toenail featured the name of the Ilopango Center for Rehabilitation for Women program “Yo Cambio” (“I Change”). Ilopango prison is on the outskirts of San Salvador, El Salvador. The prison has space for 225 inmates but housed 1,310, many of whom slept on the floor in cells packed with 70-80 women. The prison launched the “Yo Cambio” program in 2014.

The program has six parts: education, health, sports, art and culture, labor, and religion. Silvia, 37, had served eight years in prison and taught religion to other inmates in a class called “Strengthening Women for Christ.” “The church supports us to create evangelist campaigns to strengthen the word of the bible here,” she explained, pointing to a Bible quote on the chalkboard nearby.  “God is the only one who can create change in this place. I used to be terrible, very perverse,” she told me, smiling.

Yanira, 37, wore cat-eye makeup and painted eyebrows, and oversaw activities related to health, beauty, and hair coloring. Yanira had served 13-years. “Students learn skills related to hair washing, face masks, haircutting, and different makeup techniques, as well as manicure and spa pedicures. They learn a different vision from when they entered prison, and can take these lessons with them when they leave,” she explained. Several prison employees guided my tour of the “Yo Cambio” program. Every few minutes, women appeared in front of me, plying me with homemade gifts – piñatas, t-shirts painted with the Tasmanian devils, lush paper flowers, keyrings, abstract paintings, and blond princess dolls. I could feel their yearning for connection of any kind, their eagerness for conversation, and the slightest human touch and sense of relation to the outside world.

Silvia, 45, had served 16 years of a 35-year sentence and was the director of “Yo Cambio” for her prison section. She explained, “What I do as someone who is deprived of freedom is to try to focus on something positive, to show them my progress so that one day I will reap the benefits [of being freed early]. The ‘Yo Cambio’ program has helped us a lot. As an inmate, I feel that we have gradually advanced in terms of all the shortcomings that we had. We focus on feminine activities like creative nails, embroidery, and crochet. Men do activities related to fishing, farming, and agriculture.”

Next to the manicure and pedicure group, women, their hands covered in gluey paste, made piñatas in the shape of turquoise birds and cartoon characters like Shrek. Nearby, a class of 40 women in colorful spandex practiced aerobics to reggaeton music, moving in rhythm as they followed the two Nicaraguan instructors, Grace, 36, who had served 16 years and Marbeli, 33, who had served ten years.  Marbeli said, “Exercise is part of our treatment for stress and anxiety, and it minimizes the level of aggressiveness.” She talked about fleeing extreme poverty in Nicaragua in hopes of migrating to the US to find the American dream. However, they admitted, “Unfortunately, we made a mistake.” Marbeli, sounding hopeful, explained, “I think our time here has helped us. The day we leave here, we can teach aerobics classes or get a job at a gym.”

Violeta, 40, serving a 20-year sentence, stopped me to show off her intricately crocheted green shoes, which she had completed in crochet class. Her daughter, 24, was an infant when she was sent to prison. When I asked Violeta if her daughter visited her, she replied, “I won’t let her visit me because I don’t want her to become a victim.” When I asked her to explain what she meant, González admitted that she was afraid that the guards who worked at the prison would sexually harass her daughter.

After leading me through the middle of the aerobics class, my prison guides took me to a classroom where I could hear women singing, “Look into my eyes, you will see, what you mean to me,” some 30 women sang in heavily accented English. The prison offered women the chance to learn English by singing songs in English, and that day they sang Bryan Adams “Everything I Do, I Do It for You” and then burst enthusiastically into “Dust in the wind” by Kansas. The women, many so young it made me want to weep, gathered close to me as they sang, “I close my eyes, only for a moment/And the moment's gone/All my dreams pass before my eyes.”

In a classroom, Mayra Elizabeth, 44, who had spent 13 years in jail, taught women the alphabet. She worked with the women, none of whom knew how to read or write, for two hours a week. Mayra Elizabeth had gotten her high school diploma in prison and taught women how to read by turning each letter of the alphabet into an animal drawing.

María Rosa Cruz is a psychologist with the Feminist Collective for Local Development in El Salvador. She helps women accused of abortion adjust to life after prison. She pointed out that women had very little control over their bodies and often got pregnant due to the difficulty of getting birth control in a country where doctors continue to question why single women need the pill. “Women have to secretly go and request birth control because they often can’t do it openly – their partner won’t give them permission,” Rosa Cruz explained. “Having kids is a form of control and if women are taking birth control pills, men ask, ‘Why? Are you going to cheat on me?’ Women still haven’t managed to identify that their body is their own.”

Morena Herrera, 57, who is the founder and president of the Citizen’s Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion in El Salvador, has dedicated her life to fighting for women’s reproductive and sexual rights. Herrera, who has a halo of curly hair and a commanding presence explained, “The problem is that abortion isn’t understood as a problem of human rights, public health, and social justice – and this had to do with how women are valued for their sexuality, and their moral responsibility.” Herrera discussed how women in prison who had internalized the idea that abortion was evil, practiced violence against inmates who admitted to having an abortion.

Rosa Cruz also discussed how inmates accused of abortion said other inmates would shout “not even animals are as bad as you, not even dogs” and then spit on them and punch them.  “Inmates humiliate these women and even deny them water,” described Rosa Cruz, who had worked with many inmates who had survived such treatment. Herrera commented, “Society has this idea that continues to prevail that to be a woman you have to be a mother as you main or priority or that the only future for women is motherhood. Women who are not mothers are not worth anything.” According to Herrera, even in cases where underage girls were raped, judges in El Salvador tended to recommend that they marry their rapists. “It doesn’t matter if she is 11-years-old or that she is not ready because ‘she will learn!’ Ultimately, she is a woman and she is pregnant. There is a transfer of guilt, responsibility, and violence suffered to women,” Herrera explained. This practice was so common that in August 2017 lawmakers voted to end the 23-year-old law that made it possible for marriage to be a punishment for underage girls who had been raped. “There is a stigmatization and we talk about the need to regularize the termination of pregnancy immediately and we are labeled as abortionists,” said Herrera.

My body, my choice.

Alice