Nicaragua Abortion Ban 'Cruel and Inhuman
Disgrace'
By Stephanie Busari
(CNN) -- Nicaragua's total ban on abortion
is a "cruel, inhuman disgrace" that's led to
the rise in maternal deaths, human rights
organization Amnesty International has said.
Nicaraguan women hold up signs shaped like
the female form during a 2007 protest
against the anti-abortion law.
The Central American country's revised penal
code on abortion came into force in July
2008 and criminalizes all forms of abortion
regardless of the circumstances, even in
cases of rape or incest, a deformed fetus,
or when the mother's life is in danger.
Amnesty's researchers visited the country on
a fact-finding mission to assess the impact
on the lives of women in Nicaragua.
The findings are detailed in the report
issued Monday, titled: "The total abortion
ban in Nicaragua: Women's lives and health
endangered, medical professionals
criminalized."
Amnesty International describes the total
ban on therapeutic abortion -- carried out
to protect the health of the mother -- as
"cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."
"Nicaragua's ban on therapeutic abortion is
a disgrace," Amnesty International's
Executive Deputy Secretary General Kate
Gilmore said at a media briefing in Mexico
City to launch the report.
"It is a human rights scandal that ridicules
medical science and distorts the law into a
weapon against the provision of essential
medical care to pregnant girls and women,"
she added.
Gilmore was the head of a group of Amnesty
activists who visited Nicaragua, to gather
the personal accounts of doctors and women.
Nicaragua hands out prison sentences for
girls and women who seek an abortion and for
doctors and nurses who provide services
linked with abortion.
Amnesty reports that doctors and nurses are
frightened to treat a pregnant woman or girl
for illnesses such as cancer, malaria,
HIV/AIDS or cardiac emergencies where
treatment could cause injury or death to the
fetus.
One health worker told Amnesty researchers
that one woman who was admitted to hospital
following a miscarriage was so terrified of
being prosecuted for abortion that she asked
doctors not to treat her in case any
treatment was seen as an intentional
termination of pregnancy.
"She told the health worker that she was
concerned that her neighbor, who knew she
was pregnant, might report her for having an
abortion," the report said.
"There's only one way to describe what we
have seen in Nicaragua: sheer horror.
Children are being compelled to bear
children. Pregnant women are being denied
essential - including life-saving - medical
care," said Gilmore.
According to official figures cited in the
Amnesty report, in the first five months of
2009, 33 girls and women died from pregnancy
and birth-related complications, compared to
20 in the same period last year.
Before the law was changed therapeutic
abortion had been recognized as a necessary
procedure in Nicaragua for more than 100
years, Amnesty said.
However, President Daniel Ortega of the
left-wing Sandinista National Liberation
Front (FSLN) backed the law banning abortion
to win crucial conservative Roman Catholic
support in the January 2007 elections,
Amnesty said.
No one from the country's health ministry
was available for comment.
Three years ago when the ban was first
signed into law, the BBC reported that a
statement on presidency's Web site said the
new legislation would help protect the right
to life enshrined in the Nicaraguan
constitution.
The statement said abortion "allowed the
daily execution of innocent children in
their mother's womb, in open violation of
the Constitution which protected the unborn
child", the BBC reported.
Nicaragua is among only a few countries in
the world where abortion is illegal
regardless of any circumstances. Others in
Latin America include Chile, El Salvador and
the Dominican Republic. Malta and the
Philippines also have a total ban on
abortion.
"The revision of the penal code is a
retrogressive measure under international
law and places Nicaragua at odds with proven
public health policy," says the Amnesty
report.
In rape cases reported to the police in
Nicaragua, half of the female victims are
under 18 and 16 percent become pregnant.
Between 1999 and 2005, an average of around
7,000 women and girls were admitted annually
to hospitals in Nicaragua for health
complications that ended in abortion or
miscarriage, says the report.
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