She dare not get an abortion she might go to prison for a year or more; the doctor dare not help her; he risks his reputation as well as a prison sentence. The fear however has drastic consequences resulting in the death of many lives, living and unborn. On 13, 2007, Nicaragua’s National Assembly voted in favor of a new penal code that maintains a controversial blanket ban on abortion even when the pregnant woman’s life is at stake.
U.S.-based pro-abortion group Human Rights Watch released a report on Tuesday claiming the complete abortion ban Nicaragua has adopted is causing human rights abuses. The group’s new report, titled ‘Over Their Dead Bodies,” supposedly documents how the abortion ban has made women afraid to seek legal reproductive health services.The fear runs so deep that women are afraid to contact hospitals even in case of particular hemorrhaging, intimidated that they will be accused of having induced an abortion. A pregnant women’s access to emergency medical care is just not there at all!
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.
What do women do then? While some fearfully are forced to die, others seek illegal-and potentially unsafe-abortions in order to save their lives and health. Nicaragua is one of Latin America’s poorest countries , this blanket bank on abortions in the midst of political and religious power play is ruining the health and lives of the women there. Therapeutic abortion is a woman’s last right to life, no government in the world should criminalize it!
