Storytellers travel around Arizona, telling stories of death and imprisonment due to the abortion ban

Cristina Quintanilla spent two years in prison as a teenager as punishment after she gave birth to a stillborn child seven months pregnant, she said Thursday at a storytelling event in Phoenix.

Quintanilla was living in El Salvador at the time, where women are routinely arrested and locked up for miscarriages or stillbirths. The baby would be Quintanilla’s second child, the child she wanted.

Quintanilla was one of three Latin American women who told painful and sometimes terrifying stories about reproductive limitations as part of the Latinx Storytelling Tour, which made its first stop in Phoenix and has events scheduled this week in three more locations in Arizona — Somerton, Nogales and Tucson – before leaving for Florida.

“I went from the hospital straight to prison,” Quintanilla said in Spanish through a translator, recalling the 2004 stillbirth. “The press said I was the woman who killed my baby.”

The aim of the event, held just weeks before the Nov. 5 elections, was to highlight the abortion stories of Latin American women in countries with strict abortion restrictions and to emphasize the importance of fighting burdensome reproductive laws, organizers said.

The event organizers included a ballot measure regarding abortion in Arizona

The event was hosted by the International Women’s Equality Center and Arizona for Abortion Access, a ballot campaign for Proposition 139 that would have enshrined the right to abortion in the Arizona Constitution.

A spokeswoman for the anti-Proposition 139 campaign titled “It Goes Too Far” said the stories told by women in states with extreme abortion bans sound dire, but such scenarios are not indicative of what is happening in Arizona.

“Tragic stories from other states and other countries would not happen here,” said It Goes Too Far spokeswoman Cindy Dahlgren, as told about the event by The Arizona Republic. “Women in Arizona are getting abortions and are not being turned away. Women are treated for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.”

Opponents of Proposition 139 say the constitutional amendment would allow unregulated abortion in the state, which in turn would threaten the safety of women and girls seeking abortions. They argue that the current law is sufficient, not a ban on abortion, as supporters claim.

Abortion is legal in Arizona up to the 15th week of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, although there is an exception for medical emergencies. The law defines a medical emergency as a condition that, according to a doctor’s “good faith clinical judgment,” complicates a woman’s medical condition, making an abortion necessary to “prevent her death or where delay would result in a serious risk of significant and irreversible impairment.” “the main function of the body.”

Proposition 139, if passed, would prohibit restrictions on abortion until the fetus is viable: approximately 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy and when the treating physician determines there is a high likelihood the fetus will survive outside the uterus. Once viability is restored, the government may not restrict abortions that are necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of the mother.

A mother claims that a pregnant girl died after she was denied timely cancer care

The fight against abortion restrictions in Latin America is a movement often called the green wave because the color green represents health, hope and life. Although El Salvador still has a total abortion ban, there have been recent victories in Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, where abortion restrictions have been loosened.

“I saw with my own eyes what it is like to live under restrictive abortion laws. Seeing this happen in the United States, where there is a large Latino population, feels close to home,” said Paula Avila-Guillen, a human rights activist who serves as executive director of the Women’s Equality Center.

Storytelling events featuring Latin American women like Quintillana will ideally send the message that “we cannot allow these restrictions to remain the status quo,” Avila-Guillen said.

“If we let too much time pass, people will get comfortable,” she said. “It’s time to fight.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, a global human rights organization, says there is an overwhelming trend toward liberalization of abortion laws, with 60 countries relaxing their laws over the past 30 years. The organization says that in the last three decades, only four countries have withdrawn the legality of abortion: Nicaragua, Poland, El Salvador and the United States.

El Salvador’s abortion ban has no exceptions – similar to the ban in the Dominican Republic, where Rosa Hernández’s 16-year-old daughter, Rosaura “Esperancita” Almonte Hernández, was living when she became pregnant.

Rosaura found out she had leukemia in July 2012, when she was seven months pregnant, and because of this, her mother claims she did not receive the immediate treatment she needed because doctors had to consider whether the treatment would harm her baby. They only cared about the pregnancy, not Rosaura, her mother said. Rosaura died the following month when she was 13 weeks pregnant, as was her fetus.

Attendees at the Phoenix event said the fight in Arizona is not just about passing Proposition 139, but also about what happens next. First, Medicaid in Arizona should cover abortion to make it more accessible to anyone who needs it, said Alejandra Gomez, executive director of Living United For Change in Arizona (LUCHA) and one of Thursday’s storytellers.

Gomez also stated that efforts to achieve reproductive freedom must block targeted restrictions on abortion providers, known as (TRAP) regulations, which are burdensome, costly and medically unnecessary requirements often imposed on abortion providers and women’s health centers to make it more difficult for them to operate.

Gomez, 42, had an abortion during the Great Recession when she was 20, was in an unhealthy relationship and had to help her family because her father, a construction worker, lost his job.

“I came face to face with the reality: ‘I won’t be able to take care of my child, my family and myself,’” she said. “I also felt like I just wasn’t ready.”

The Green Wave freed women imprisoned for miscarriages and stillbirths

The reproductive freedom movement does not rely on restrictions like Arizona’s 15-week restriction, Avila-Guillen said. It’s about empowering families and doctors to decide when to have an abortion, not lawmakers, she said.

The pursuit of reproductive freedom in Arizona has an exciting energy that reminds Avili-Guillen of the Latin American reproductive freedom movement, she told the crowd in Phoenix.

According to Avila-Guillen, over the course of four years, the Green Wave in Latin America changed laws in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico and freed more than 65 women imprisoned in El Salvador for miscarriages and stillbirths. She said the movement played a key role in ending the ban on emergency contraception in Honduras.

“I think that’s the message,” she said. “We just have to fight.”

The Latinx Storytelling Tour continues this week at the following Arizona locations:

At 9:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 27 at the Border Regional Health Center, conference room, 950 E. Main St. Building A in Somerton.
At 9:30 a.m. Saturday, September 28, at the 1904 Santa Cruz County Courthouse, 21 E. Court St., Nogales.
At 4 p.m., Saturday, September 28 at Carriage House, 125 S. Arizona Ave., Tucson,

Republic reporter Stacey Barchanger contributed to this article.

Reach health care reporter Stephanie Innes at [email protected] or follow her previously on X Twitter: @stephanieinnes.