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Life...a right of all women
On the 26 of October in 2006 the national legislature
created a law, law 603, that criminalized
therapeutic abortion in Nicaragua. This was a practice that had been
established for more than 100 years specifically in our penal code.
(headlines) criminalizing therapeutic abortion
shameful votes
dismayed doctors
In one blow, Nicaragua entered a small group that treat this matter
differently from the rest of the world.
Dr. Adriana Ortega: "In Latin America and the Carribbean, abortion is
totally outlawed in Chile, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.
Other Latin American countries have adopted systems
under which abortion may be legal.
Recently in Colombia, in an unprecedented decision, the Constitutional Court
chose to partially decriminalize abortion, arguing that
a complete prohibition was a violation of
the human and constitutional rights of Colombian women.
The Constitutional Court of Colombia adopted a system with four indications:
risk of death, risk to health,
congenital abnormalities, and *** or ***.
Abortion, in all forms, including therapeutic abortion,
is absolutely prohibited, in countries that are very poor,
where democratic rights are limited,
and the populace lacks political representation or active proceedings.
Abortion is a word loaded with negative connotations.
On the road to eliminating it, a mistake has occurred,
where the interruption of pregnancy for medical reasons
has been treated as a crime.
The key word, that the legislators decided to ignore, is “therapeutic.”
Dr. Anibal Faundes, FIGO: "I understand that the objective
of the legislators who decided to remove the law that legalized
legalized therapeutic abortion in Nicaragua
was to reduce the number of abortions.
This objective is shared by practically the rest of the world.
I believe that all reasonable persons do not like abortions,
and would prefer that no woman, under any circumstance,
would have to have an abortion.
What happens with therapeutic abortion,
in a very small percentage of cases overall,
perhaps less than one percent of total abortions
that occur in Nicaragua or other Latin American countries,
is that the pregnancies are typically interrupted
with the intention of saving the woman’s life.
If one does not terminate the pregnancy,
what will happen is that not only the woman will die,
but the fetus will die as well.
For these cases, prohibiting therapeutic abortion
does not meet the objective of defending the fetus.”
This was the case of a young woman in Managua, who
on the 31st of January in 2007, died
from serious problems with her pregnancy.
For her, who'll we'll protect in anonymity,
the dream of motherhood became a nightmare.
Someone close to this girl shares her story:
“Maria,” young woman’s sister: “When her sickness started,
her body swelled up,
her feet and hands turned white, and there was blood in her mouth
When we took her to the hospital, they told me that she had leukemia....
leukemia, which was causing her to feel so bad."
She didn’t understand, or she ignored the consequences of leukemia.
On her 15th birthday, she had her first pregnancy.
“She went to the hospital at 5 in the afternoon and her husband returned,
saying that she had been pregnant but that she lost her baby.”
Perhaps she felt ashamed to ask for contraceptives at the city center.
Perhaps she wanted to be a mother at any cost.
Her second pregnancy was fatal.
“She said that she was going to have a baby no matter what anyone thought.
So she became pregnant with the first child,
and then she became pregnant again with the other child.
She felt calm because she was finally going to have her baby,
and she thought that everything would be fine, everything was going right
And that baby was the one that led her, I say, well, maybe, to die."
Faundes: “Sacrificing a woman by not interrupting a pregnancy
generally does not accomplish the goal
of saving the life of the fetus,
because, obviously, when the woman dies, the fetus also dies,
and many times it is not possible
to delay the death of the woman until the fetus is viable.
Therefore, even if the whole world wants to save the fetus,
there is no alternative, but to to end the pregnancy.”
Prohibiting the interruption of pregnancy for health-related causes
is not an efficient means to prevent abortions.
“Some countries have been able to reduce abortions to a very small number.
These countries have the following conditions:
women have the ability to control their *** lives,
and they are able to protect themselves so as to not become pregnant.
This is the first condition that allows the number of abortions to be reduced.
We have to promote the *** education
of both children and adolescents.
When well oriented *** education programs are introduced,
and they are comprehensive enough to reduce the number of abortions,
it has the additional effect of delaying the first *** contact,
reducing the number of *** contacts a young woman has,
and the frequency of *** relations also diminishes.”