NICARAGUA: GOVERNMENT FIRM ON ALL-OUT ABORTION BAN.
By Benjamin Witte-Lebhar
The Nicaraguan government continues to back a total ban on abortion despite routine complaints from human rights groups that say the policy--updated in 2006 to eliminate all exceptions--is discriminatory and unnecessarily puts the lives of women and girls in jeopardy.
Echoing concerns raised regularly by influential groups such as Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW), the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in early February urged Nicaragua to relax the blanket ban and make exceptions for therapeutic cases (where pregnancy is deemed a health risk for the mother) as well as for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. The OHCHR made the recommendation during a periodic review of the Central American country, which, according to the Geneva, Switzerland-based UN body, would also do well to improve protections for women and girls victimized by domestic and sexual violence.
The Nicaraguan penal code's total ban on abortion "applies even in cases of rape, incest, or apparently life-threatening pregnancies that in many cases are the direct result of crimes of gender violence," said the OHCHR.
Nicaragua's ultrastrict abortion law has also been criticized in recent years by the UN Committee against Torture (CAT), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
Except in Cuba and the two Guyanas, elective abortion is prohibited throughout Latin America. Blanket bans, however, exist only in Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic. Therapeutic abortions are also illegal in Malta, the Philippines, and Vatican City. Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Uruguay make exceptions for rape victims.
The Nicaraguan government, led by one-time Sandinista revolutionary President Daniel Ortega, staunchly defends the ban, which it hails as a "sovereign decision" that should, therefore, be respected by international bodies. While it accepted many of the OHCHR's recommendations, the government is refusing to budge on the abortion issue.
Insisting that a majority of Nicaraguans support the ban, Interior Minister Ana Isabel Morales told the UN body that the people of her country "believe it's important that the unborn have a right to live since they're also human beings." She added, "Abortion is not an appropriate method of birth control."
Like in most Latin American...
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