Abortion in El Salvador is punishable with 20 to 40 years in prison. Indebted to All Women wants to give voice to those women suffering and struggling to change one of the most restrictive laws in the world for sexual and reproductive rights.

Director’s Statement: Our first contact with this story was framed in an international cooperation project. Someone told us about a group of women who were imprisoned for homicide after suffering complications during their pregnancies. 

We faced a wide range of challenges: constraints in freely moving around and filming in public spaces, personal safety, and finding people within a population that accepts abortion as a crime to talk about abortion, publically. Nevertheless, we were also lucky. Agrupación Ciudadana extended to us their contacts, archival footage, advice, and logical support; ACCP helped get us into institutions; Arpocsal provided a communitarian health promoter to guide us around the San Martín neighborhood and get access to hospitals and health centers; Tiempos Nuevos Teatro opened their shelter house to us. 

This documentary is owned by all of us; it is born as a tool for political incidence and social movement to change laws. And it is greatly rewarding to know that Indebted to All Women, along with other raw footage, was delivered to the Work Group on Arbitrary Detention at the UN to officially ask the Salvadoran government to release imprisoned women. In moments like these, we feel that our job has an impact that goes further than the filming itself.