What Happened to Belén
The Unjust Imprisonment That Sparked a Women’s Rights Movement
- 240 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
What Happened to Belén
The Unjust Imprisonment That Sparked a Women’s Rights Movement
About this book
"There are many women like Belén whose names we don’t know, but whose stories are just as important. An uplifting chronicle of one woman’s fight for justice."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Foreword by Margaret Atwood
The heartbreaking true story of an Argentinian woman imprisoned for having a miscarriage—an injustice that galvanized a feminist movement and became a global rallying cry in the fight for reproductive rights.
In 2014, Belén, a twenty-five-year-old woman living in rural Argentina, went to the hospital for a stomachache—and soon found herself in prison. While at the hospital she had a miscarriage—without knowing she was pregnant. Because of the nation’s repressive laws surrounding abortion and reproductive rights, the doctors were forced to report her to the authorities. Despite her protestations, Belén was convicted and sentenced to two years for homicide.
Belén’s imprisonment is a glaring example of how women’s health care has become increasingly criminalized, putting the most vulnerable—BIPOC, rural, and low-income—women at greater risk of prosecution. Belén’s cause became the centerpiece of a movement to achieve greater protections for all women. After two failed attempts to clear her name, Belén met feminist lawyer Soledad Deza, who quickly rallied Amnesty International and ignited an international feminist movement around #niunamas—not one more—symbolized by thousands of demonstrators around the globe donning white masks, the same kind of mask Belén wore when leaving prison. The #niunamas movement was instrumental in pressuring Argentine president Alberto Fernández to decriminalize abortion in 2021.
In this gripping and personal account of the case and its impact on local law, Ana Correa, one of Argentina’s leading journalists and activists, makes clear that what happened to Belén could happen to any woman—and that we all have the power to raise our collective voices and demand change.
Translated by Julia Sanches
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Foreword by Margaret Atwood
- 1: Station Stories
- 2: An Ordinary Woman
- 3: Soledad
- 4: Hi, It’s Me, Belén
- 5: Alfeñiques and Hamburgers
- 6: I’ll Help in Any Way I Can
- 7: The Real Story
- 8: Those Who Stay and Those Who Go
- 9: Stomach Pain
- 10: From Cramps to Homicide
- 11: Corporal Candela
- 12: In the Emergency Room
- 13: Locked Up
- 14: Get Me Out of Here
- 15: She Cries
- 16: A Christmas Present
- 17: Open the Doors (to Go Out and Play)
- 18: Tucumán Is the New Black
- 19: The Path to Trial
- 20: High Heels
- 21: The Meeting
- 22: There Will Be No Justice
- 23: Sentenced
- 24: History Is Written by the Winners
- 25: I’m Belén
- 26: From Tucumán to the World
- 27: Time to Share
- 28: Celina
- 29: Groundless
- 30: A Booming Silence in Tucumán
- 31: Confidentiality
- 32: In Search of a Reason
- 33: Women in Action
- 34: From Silence to the UN
- 35: #NiUnaMenos: Not One Less
- 36: Belén Meets María Magdalena
- 37: Blindsided
- 38: Argentina, Too
- 39: Mind the Gap
- 40: The Judges Are Smoking and Drinking Coffee in Their Chambers
- 41: Through My Fault, Through My Most Grievous Fault
- 42: Women from Here
- 43: Mariana
- 44: The Right to Choose Who I Talk To
- 45: The Republic of Women from Tucumán
- 46: Without Freedom We Are Nothing
- 47: Ten Friends
- 48: Pila
- 49: Patient First, Prisoner Second
- 50: A Very Sensitive Issue
- 51: Sisters Fighting
- 52: Pirincho
- 53: Sold-Out Masks
- 54: Swing Vote
- 55: What’s the Matter, Mom?
- 56: Again, the Wait
- 57: This Must Be a Dream
- 58: The Moon over Tucumán
- 59: First Words
- 60: Are You Looking for Belén? I’m Belén
- 61: A New Imprisonment
- 62: Sometimes We Find Our Way Back to Our First Love
- 63: Another Guilty New Year’s Eve
- 64: International Women’s Day
- 65: The City of Rage
- 66: Are You Sitting Down?
- 67: Prison or Death
- 68: A Sealed Envelope
- 69: Remember Me?
- 70: A New Life Not So Different from Everyone Else’s
- 71: A Year After I Was Born Again
- 72: Belén’s Angels
- 73: The Patriarchy That Will Not Fall
- 74: Maybe It’s the Passage of Time
- 75: Three Years Later
- 76: Publication
- 77: The Green Wave
- 78: . . . New Season: Revenge
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- About the Foreword Author
- About the Translator
- Copyright
- About the Publisher