[An "old" article from October of this year.]
Nicaragua on the verge of banning abortion
If a revision of the penal code passes Nicaragua’s National Assembly, women who get abortions or those who aid them could face time behind prison bars.
Photo courtesy of Betty Press, Panos Pictures.
October 16, 2006 – Nicaragua threatens to become the third nation in the Western Hemisphere and the fourth in the world to outlaw abortion, joining Chile, El Salvador and Malta. Beginning Tuesday, Oct. 17, the Justice Committee of the National Assembly will begin reviewing legislation that would remove the only exemption to the statute outlawing abortion in the Penal Code — the need for therapeutic abortions that save women’s lives — and at the same time increase the penalty for anyone who procures or performs an abortion.
The proposed penalties could be greater than for homicide, anywhere from six to 30 years imprisonment.
The legislation was scheduled to go first through the assembly’s Justice Committee and then to the full assembly. But Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños intends to bypass the committee and fast-track the legislation to the assembly for a vote this week, regardless of whether the committee has completed its review.
The legislation comes against the backdrop of the Nov. 5 presidential and National Assembly elections in Nicaragua. Catholic and evangelical church leaders have pushed the National Assembly to move up the vote on abortion law change so that it precedes the national election, holding legislators’ re-elections hostage to their vote on the bill. The consequences for the nation’s women, however, would be dire.
In Nicaragua, one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries, the maternal and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the region. Unsafe abortion is a significant — and arguably the most preventable — contributor to Nicaragua’s maternal mortality rate, causing 16 percent of all maternal deaths. Even with strict restrictions, approximately 32,000 abortions occur each year, only a handful of which are legal and safe (six in 2002).
Access to safe abortion care is closely linked to maternal survival. Denial of this care, which puts women at risk for unsafe abortion, is increasingly seen by international legal bodies as a human rights violation. In 2005, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights ruled in a complaint filed under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights that the rights of a 17-year-old Peruvian had been violated when health officials denied her a therapeutic abortion although her fetus had a fatal abnormality (K.L. v. Peru). Earlier this year, the Mexican government settled with petitioners to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Paulina, a 13-year-old girl who had been raped, became pregnant and was denied an abortion, although rape is considered a legal indication for abortion in Mexico. The country has since issued a decree with guidelines regulating access to abortion for rape victims (Paulina Ramirez v. Mexico).
In nations that have expanded access to safe abortion care in the past decade, including Romania and South Africa, maternal mortality rates have shown significant improvement. South Africa included reproductive rights in its 1996 constitution and passed a law legalizing abortion later that year; the decade since has seen a likely 91-percent decrease in the maternal mortality rate, according to early findings. In an effort to address its own high maternal mortality rate, Ethiopia broadened its legal indications for abortion in 2004.
The trend extends to Latin America: Earlier this year, Colombia’s Constitutional Court found that denying women access to safe abortion care violated their constitution and women’s human rights. As a result of the ruling, abortions will now be permitted in cases of rape, fetal malformation, or when the life or health of the mother or fetus is in danger.
If the Nicaraguan National Assembly passes the penal code revision, Nicaragua will join only a handful of nations, including the United States, that are bucking the global trend by tightening, not loosening, their abortion restrictions. In the face of thousands of worldwide injuries and deaths each year from unsafe abortion and the lives that have been saved elsewhere by expanding access to safe abortion care, Nicaraguan politicians are clearly showing that women’s lives may be sacrificed to win elections.
http://www.ipas.org/english/press_room/2006/releases/10162006.asp
