El Salvador frees three women convicted for suspected abortions

Court commutes sentences of three women who say they were prosecuted after suffering miscarriages, obstetric emergenciesIlopango, El Salvador - Alba Lorena Rodriguez embraced her 11- and 14-year-old daughters as a free woman for the first time in nearly a decade on Thursday.Since 2010, Rodriguez has been behind bars for an abortion-related conviction in El Salvador, a country with one of the harshest abortion bans in the world.During that time, the 39-year-old mother has only been able to see her daughters on designated family visit days every 15 days, sometimes seeing them less frequently when the family did not have enough money to travel to the Ilopango women's prison on the outskirts of San Salvador.Rodriguez's mother-in-law and daughters were excited and anxious as they made the trip one last time."I'm going to hug her," said Gloria Rivas, Rodriguez's mother-in-law, as she waited outside for her daughter.On Thursday, Rodriguez was released from prison after the supreme court commuted her 30-year sentence.Two other women sentenced for suspected abortions - Maria del Transito Orellana, and Cinthia Marcela Rodriguez - were also released in the latest win for women's rights activists fighting to loosen the country's strict abortion laws.Since the Central American nation banned abortion under all circumstances in 1998, dozens of women have been sentenced to up to 30 years for abortion-related crimes.