Abortion in Central America: Where women don't have a say or ...

International organizations are stressing the high mortality rates and lack of protection for women and their sexual and reproductive freedom.

Nuria Riutord

A young twenty-year old woman is seven months pregnant and home alone. The house is a rural family property in her native village, Sacacoyo, El Salvador. Suddenly she suffers from a premature delivery. Her family find her in state of shock, hemorrhaging and weak.

They take her immediately to the hospital where the doctor who took care of her accused her to the authorities for having a planned abortion, which is illegal according to the country?s law.

The girl hadn?t informed her employers about her pregnancy and her partner abandoned her just after she gave him the news.

The accusations culminate in the girl?s retention. After that a trial is carried out without a single autopsy and all evidence taken to consideration was the physician testimony.It ends with the woman being given a thirty year sentence. .

This story is just one more example of the totally traumatic experiences many girls have to go through in most of the Central America countries.

In this case the name of the protagonist is Sonia T?bora. After seven years of torment due to the legal process she had to go through, in 2005 her case was revised and this August she was released.

It is without a doubt one the most emblematic recent episodes in ?the fight for ?woman?s sexual health and reproductive rights across Central America. The figures concerning these problems are devastating.

A reality in numbers

According to the association ?Central America Women?s Network (CAWN), 95% of the abortions in Latin America are not done with the necessary medical safety a procedure like it requires.

The health professionals are obliged by law to notify the authorities in any case of abortion. This obviously breaks the confidential doctor ? patient relationship and makes any woman going through this situation for her future, and more likely to find alternative, and sometimes more dangerous methods of abortion.

M?xico has a high mortality rate in pregnant woman, especially in poor rural areas. Even though in Mexico City it is legal to abort within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, nowadays in half of the counties it is considered a crime and it can be punished with even 30 years of prison.

At the ?moment over twenty women, aged between 15 and 33 years old, are serving for this matter.

In Guatemala ?it would seem that everything is being done to protect ?women who are considering abortion. The reality is that they don?t actually have access to contraceptives. In fact, the governmental plans for the sexual health and education and family planning aren?t seeming to be effective.

In spite of the different international treaties signed about this matter the figures show that every day two woman die because of complications before, during or after birth.

The mortality rate is ?120 deaths in ?every 100.000 births. This is ?the second highest in all Latin America. It is estimated that 65.000 abortions take place annually, which means one for every six pregnancies.

If we look at Honduras, we see that the legislation has been changing over the decades and that at this point there are no exceptions to the general abortion prohibition.

On the contrary, during the Nineties ?women were allowed to have an abortion when it was in a case of rape, or when there was a risk for the mother?s life or because of a disability of the foetus. Today it is very different, it being ?illegal even to use the ?morning after pill?, which is different to what most human rights organisations around the world stand for.

No way out

Back to El Salvador, where hormonal contraceptives are included in the national public health system, the admirable efforts to make society aware about this problem and to give a better sexual education are not resulting in as good changes as expected. In fact, over 40% of women get pregnant before being 20 years old. This is happening ?even now when anti-conceptive methods are reaching a usage of 70%.

Since 1999, by law, the foetus is considered a human being from the moment of the conception. It is also established that abortion can punishable with up to 30 years, being ?a crime under any circumstance. The truth ?is that the number of abortions is indeterminate and at this moment there are women in prison because of having an abortion.

In Nicaragua, the country has developed a system to make family planning work and to reduce mortality rate. The thing is that it is only applied in the richest parts of the nation. According to the figures, 100 of every 100.000 births still end with the mother dying.

Another alarming fact is that they have the highest number of teenage pregnancies: representing a quarter of the total number of pregnancies. As there is no provision of a legal abortion in the country?s legislation, girls turn to unorthodox and unsafe ways to solve their situation.

All these figures show that there is no judiciary safety (and not even social support either sometimes) for woman in matters of their sexual and reproductive freedom in Central America.

The only way to change this issue, and the lives of many Latin American women, is to fight for the causes of all the international organisations protecting human?s and women?s rights as well as those of the World Health Organisation.

Source: http://www.theprisma.co.uk/2012/10/21/abortion-in-central-america-where-women-don%E2%80%99t-have-a-say-or-rights/

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