Nicaragua Abortion
Ban A Violation, Rights
Group Says
By Tracy Wilkinson
Nicaragua's
total ban on abortion is a violation of
human rights and is killing a growing number
of women and children, Amnesty International
said Monday in launching a campaign to have
the measure repealed.
In a report released in Mexico City, the
international human rights organization said
Nicaragua's law, which went into effect in
late 2006, puts the Central American country
among the 3% of the world's nations that do
not allow abortion under any circumstance.
Citing statistics from the Nicaraguan Health
Ministry, the report says 33 women and girls
died from pregnancy complications in the
first 19 weeks of this year, compared with
20 in the same period last year. It also
says the real numbers are probably much
higher.
Nicaragua has one of Latin America's highest
rates of sexual violence, with the abuse
often perpetrated by fathers, uncles or
other relatives.
At least 50% of reported rapes are of girls
under the age of 18, and most of those who
get pregnant are under 15, the report says.
Women and girls who have been impregnated by
rapists or whose lives or health is at risk
are not allowed to abort.
"A festering, debilitating human rights
situation [is] bringing grave fear, threat,
harm and even death to Nicaragua's girl
children and women," Kate Gilmore, executive
deputy secretary-general of Amnesty
International, said in Mexico City.
Abortion laws are generally restrictive in
most of Latin America. The irony in
Nicaragua is that the ban was backed by
now-President Daniel Ortega, who led the
leftist Sandinista revolution 30 years ago
and championed women's rights. In the middle
of the 2006 election season, Ortega promoted
the law to gain support of the conservative
Roman Catholic Church and return to power.
The ban ended a 100-year-old exception that
had allowed abortion when the woman's health
was at risk.
Amnesty International issued its 50-page
report after an investigation in Nicaragua
by Gilmore and a team of experts. She said
Ortega refused to see them, and the health
minister dismissed their findings of a
growing mortality rate among pregnant women
as unfounded.
Dr. Leonel Arguello, president of the
Nicaraguan Society of General Medicine, said
the ban has had a chilling effect on
doctors.
"Not being allowed to do everything to save
your patient goes against medical ethics,"
he said in a telephone interview from
Managua, the capital. Fearing they will
break the law, many doctors decline to treat
pregnant women in obstetric emergencies, or
delay treatment, increasing the risks, he
said.
The ban initially contained penalties of up
to six years in prison for women who had
abortions and the doctors who performed
them. That was raised to eight years last
year. Some advocates wanted sentences of up
to 30 years. No one has yet been charged or
put on trial.
Though criticized by human rights and
women's groups since it was first drafted,
the prohibition received wide support from
the church and from several political
parties in addition to Ortega's Sandinistas.
A petition supporting the ban collected
300,000 signatures.
Proponents argued at the time that advances
in medical science allowed doctors to bring
a fetus to the point of viability without
endangering the woman's life and that
warnings of heightened dangers were
exaggerated.
But Gilmore said lawmakers ignored expert
opinion to the contrary. |
