Abortion
Promoters Assail Nicaragua For Protecting
Unborn Children
Managua (CNA).- Ipas, one of the world’s
largest abortion advocacy groups, has joined
critics of Nicaragua’s decision to further
restrict abortion. The group characterizes
the decision as a violation of women’s human
rights, but the country’s lawmakers say they
are simply recognizing the right to life
from “the moment of conception.”
Nicaraguan lawmakers recently decided that
“therapeutic” abortion violates the
country’s understanding of its international
obligations.
Ipas, which distributes the early-term
abortion device known as a manual vacuum
aspirator, claimed that the decision was
unconstitutional and a “setback” for human
rights.
The Catholic Family and Human Rights
Institute (C-FAM), which reported on Ipas’
activities, has noted that Nicaragua is
party to the American Convention on Human
Rights. Article 4 of the convention says
that life shall be protected by law “from
the moment of conception.”
Lawmakers also justified their decision on
the grounds that the new law makes the
country’s penal code more consistent with
its constitutional framework. After the
death penalty was abolished, the framework
was amended to explicitly recognize the
right to life of every citizen.
According to C-FAM, Ipas defines
“therapeutic abortion” in a way that
justifies the lawmakers’ concerns. The
former law reportedly allowed a loophole
that allowed access to abortion to
continually expand. Ipas categorizes cases
of “therapeutic” abortion as those which
save “the life and health of the mother” and
also those in pregnancies resulting from
rape or incest.
In Ipas’ view, the abortion legislation
“excludes many women who need it to save
their lives,” while the Nicaraguan
government insists the ban does not prohibit
life-saving procedures.
The Ipas reports hold that the abortion ban
violates medical professionals’ right to
free exercise, arguing that the ban “forces
doctors to violate ethical principles of
their profession to prevent an abortion
while endangering the life or health of
women.”
The Association of Nicaraguan Doctors has
argued against this claim, saying that there
is no situation in current medical practice
where human life from the moment of
conception should be “intentionally
destroyed by abortion in order to save the
life of the mother.”
“A physician must do everything possible to
save the lives of both patients – mother and
child. Death should never be inflicted on
any of them.”
Critics of the Ipas reports also charge that
they ignore the two most successful methods
of reducing maternal mortality: increasing
the prevalence of skilled attendants at
birth and improving the availability of
optimum pre- and post-natal health care for
mothers and their children. |
