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ALERT: Nicaraguan Assembly Bans Abortion

On October 26, 2006, the Nicaraguan National Assembly voted 52–0 (with 9 abstentions and 29 absent legislators) to outlaw therapeutic abortion in Nicaragua. While abortion in most cases in Nicaragua was already illegal, for over 100 years, Nicaragua's penal code allowed for therapeutic abortions when a women's life or health was at risk. By eliminating all exceptions (including any for rape or incest), Nicaragua will become the third country in the western hemisphere to completely outlaw abortion, joining Chile and El Salvador. The Assembly postponed a vote to further criminalize abortion; current President Enrique Bolaños and conservative religious leaders wanted to send women and abortion providers to prison for up to 20–30 years, but for the time being the maximum prison sentence stands at six years.

MADRE joins women's human rights activists and public health advocates around the world in condemning the legislation and its attack on women's sexual rights, and reproductive rights. The new law was written in direct defiance of numerous international agreements to which Nicaragua is a signatory, and parallels a dangerous trend in the US that seeks to erode women's reproductive rights.

Evangelical and Catholic Clergy Seize Window of Opportunity Before Elections

The timing of the vote was no accident. Evangelical and Catholic clergy pushed for a vote before Nicaragua's national elections on November 5 in order to pressure incumbents and presidential candidates (afraid of alienating socially conservative voters) to support the ban. [See MADRE's statement, Nicaraguans Cast Votes against US Intervention] As Dr. Mirna Cunningham—president of MADRE's sister organization, the Center for Indigenous Peoples' Autonomy and Development, and a former Minister of Health and National Assembly member—told The New York Times: '"The presidential election is so polarized that the church saw this as an opportunity to force this issue now."'

Abortion Ban Exacerbates Threats to Women's Health

Healthcare practitioners have responded forcefully in defense of therapeutic abortion and their moral, medical, and human rights obligations to save a woman's life or preserve her health when it is threatened. They caution that rates of unsafe abortion will dramatically increase—unsafe abortion in Nicaragua currently causes 16 percent of maternal deaths. National medical associations project that a complete ban on abortions in Nicaragua will lead to at least a 60 percent increase in maternal mortality. Rape victims who become pregnant—many of whom are young girls—will have no legal option to terminate their pregnancy, further exacerbating risks of unsafe abortion and compounding the trauma, poverty, and discrimination often faced by survivors of sexual violence. And most ectopic pregnancies (when a fertilized egg is implanted outside the uterus)—of which there are 400–600 annually in Nicaragua—will be an automatic death sentence if doctors are prevented from considering the option of therapeutic abortion to save a woman's life.

Doctors Paralyzed: First Death Attributed to Therapeutic Abortion Ban

Efrain Toruño, President of the Nicaraguan Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, warned immediately that the ban would paralyze doctors: for example, he says, if a woman arrives at a hospital with vaginal bleeding, doctors will be afraid to treat her or to leave her alone, fearing prosecution either way. In fact, as reported by La Prensa, a national Nicaraguan newspaper, the first death attributed to the therapeutic abortion ban occurred on Friday, November 3, when an 18–year–old woman from the outskirts of Managua died of an internal hemorrhage because doctors were afraid to abort her five–month–old fetus. Deborah Grandison, the Special Ombudsperson for Women, announced her office would investigate the case, because "it seems apparent that doctors who attended her were unwilling to apply the therapeutic procedure for fear of being penalized under the new law." The young woman's death prompted immediate protests from the Nicaraguan women's movement, which has actively opposed the new law and has vowed to challenge it before Nicaragua's Supreme Court, or if necessary, the Inter–American Commission on Human Rights.

MADRE's Partners Respond

In the rural communities of MADRE's sister organizations on the North Atlantic Coast, maternal mortality rates are already twice the national average and women—many of whom are Indigenous or of African–descent—are routinely denied access to quality healthcare services because of government neglect, racism and discrimination, and neoliberal economic policies that undermine healthcare and other critical services. Just after news of the ban broke, MADRE received a message from a longtime partner of ours on the North Atlantic Coast, Rose Cunningham: "Today is a horribly sad day. While doctors now fear that if a pregnant woman arrives with complications, they will have to let her bleed to death or go to prison, the Catholic Church is celebrating their success—the death of women—as if it were the biggest party of the year."

By Irene Schneeweis, Program Coordinator