Nicaragua Abortion Ban
Killing Women -Rights
Group
MANAGUA, Oct 2 (Reuters)
- An outright ban on
abortion in Nicaragua
has caused the deaths of
at least 80 women since
it was imposed 11 months
ago, Human Rights Watch
said on Tuesday.
The U.S.-based rights
group said women with
risky pregnancies whose
lives might be saved by
aborting the fetus were
dying because of the ban
on terminations in any
circumstance.
"They died because of
the intimidation effect
of penalizing abortion,"
said Human Rights Watch
investigator Angela
Heimburger, presenting
the data in Managua.
"While Latin America
advances on the path to
democracy and exercising
citizen rights,
Nicaragua is going
backward in terms of
respecting human rights,
pluralism and
secularism," she said.
A week before
Nicaragua's Nov. 5,
2006, election,
lawmakers extended a ban
on abortions to include
rape victims and women
who risk dying in
childbirth, angering
women's rights activists
and medical groups.
Under the law, pushed by
the previous
conservative government
and Nicaragua's powerful
Roman Catholic Church,
women who abort or
doctors who help them
risk three years or more
in prison.
Aside from the blow to
women who become
pregnant after rape or
incest, the law is
viewed as risking the
lives of the some 400
women who suffer
dangerous ectopic
pregnancies in Nicaragua
each year.
The law's timing was
seen as central to its
success, as left-wing
lawmakers reluctantly
supported it to help
Sandinista leader Daniel
Ortega get the Church's
backing to sweep back to
power.
When Ortega was first in
power, after his 1979
revolution, his
government reaffirmed
the right to terminate
pregnancies resulting
from rape, incest or if
a woman's life was at
risk. |
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