Since July 2008, abortion in all circumstances has been banned in Nicaragua. The new law makes no exceptions for terminating pregnancies that endanger the health or life of the woman, or that result from rape or incest. Girls or women seeking or obtaining abortions are subject to imprisonment. Health care professionals providing abortions — or even unintentionally injuring a fetus — face jail time and being barred from practice.
A new Amnesty International report, The Total Abortion Ban in Nicaragua, details the effects of the new measures. Medical professionals are put in an impossible situation: they’re prevented, on pain of criminal prosecution, from providing essential medical services — in direct contradiction of best-practice guidelines from the Ministry of Health. Women who need abortions to preserve their health — or lives — have to find doctors willing to risk prosecution and suspension of their license, or seek out dangerous back-alley terminations.
The ban has a chilling effect, too, on women suffering obstetric complications: one woman admitted to a hospital following a miscarriage was so frightened that she would be charged with having an abortion that she asked doctors not to intervene. The rate of maternal deaths in Nicaragua has increased: Official figures show that 33 girls and women have died in pregnancy or childbirth so far this year, up from 20 in the same period a year ago.
Finally, girls and women who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence must either carry the pregnancy to term, or look for risky, clandestine abortions. Our researchers spoke with women, raped by relatives, who were forced to give birth — sometimes to their own brothers or sisters. In every case, it’s low-income women who are hit hardest — richer Nicaraguans are able to travel abroad to escape the ban.
Now, all of this was shockingly, appallingly predictable — but the full litany of violations makes terrible reading. That the Nicaraguan health minister is dismissing the report just shows how hard human rights supporters will have to push to overturn the ban.
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OPINION: Nicaragua Shows What Could Be if Abortion Outlawed in US
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A rise of 13 in a year?!
This is supposed to be drastic and some kind of emergency?
Says Amnesty international:
Quick!! Take action!!*
*(Please ignore the 1.2 million whimsically aborted children every year.)
- SolarSanitizer
July 29, 2009 12:13PM
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Fried by the sun?
"whimsically aborted" is a personal opinion Solar, not a statistical fact.
- JBarnett
July 29, 2009 8:46PM
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Fried by the sun?
If you have something you want to say, just come out and say it. No need to be passive-aggressive on the internet .
I stand by my statement. Aborting 1 life on whimsy is a bad choice.
Ignoring 1,200,000 abortions a year is Liberalism.
Perhaps /I/ am not the one who needs to get out of the sun, erm?
- SolarSanitizer
July 29, 2009 8:59PM
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I too stand by my statement
"whimsically aborted" is a personal opinion Solar, not a fact. I find it highly unlikely that you've done the research to verify that 1.2 million abortions per year are performed "on a whimsy". Abortion is a complex issue, I may not like it, but I will always support the individual's right to make that choice for themselves (I'm not living their life or circumstances..it's not my place to decide, nor is it yours).
- JBarnett
July 29, 2009 9:11PM
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Ok, if one word is blocking your vision...
...Perhaps I could use another. How about unneccessary. Or elective, or conveinent. Perhaps discretionary, or optional, or selective. Maybe you'd prefer to see these other words so you could then see the message in the sentence.
Talk about missing the forest because of the trees, but I digress.
You are correct on one point, though. I cannot compile these numbers as a private citizen. It takes scholarly research to determine such statistics. If proof ot that will keep you from "poisoning my well" on this matter, I give you the following:
http://www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/phil %20115/Stats_on_abortion.htm
Now, care to discuss this, or are you still stuck on a word?
- SolarSanitizer
July 29, 2009 9:21PM
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acceptable
So it is acceptable to you for a girl to have to bring her own brother to term?
That is one stack of numbers by the way... with no indication of the methodology used, so it's hardly a valid source
- MrBook
July 29, 2009 9:33PM
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No, I'm not a savage.
Rape, incest, and bona-fide risk are reasonable scenarios for abortion . They are serious issues, and not given to whimsy.
Alternatively, if the partner isn't wanting children , interference with career, interference with social life, wanting to keep one's figure, ect. are reasons for abortion which are birth-control, and elective in nature. I don't agree with abortion as birth-control. As a single parent who struggles with a special-needs child, I think I have a leg to stand on.
As for the numbers...The were compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, which is a leading authority on abortion in America and abroad. They have a website.
- SolarSanitizer
July 29, 2009 11:39PM
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Dead link
No stats found.
- Submariner July 29, 2009 10:31PM
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There is a space between,
"phil" and "&". Ya gotta paste it in your url bar and remove the space.
I don't know why it did that.
- SolarSanitizer
July 29, 2009 11:33PM
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While we are counting...
This controversy is so screwy. If life is material enough to keep score - shouldn't we use criteria better than potential-to-get-own name-some-day to count it? Why use mass, or age, or physical attractiveness? Capacity to suffer and utilitarian usefulness sound like more valid things to measure quantity of life than just having managed to complete a few cell division.
And your categorization of Liberalism is hardly fair for the body of modern thought that established democratic values, inalienable human rights, equality, and the notion of individual quality of life having universal value.
It does not surprise me that you would take the right of the mother to choose to be one from her if you so "whimisically abort" the establishment of modern liberalism that gives, among other things, you the right to say something, no matter how savagely ignorant it is.
- Submariner July 29, 2009 10:41PM
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What are you talking about?
Your first paragraph is nonsensical.
You last paragraph, especially the line: "the establishment of modern liberalism that gives, among other things, you the right to say something" makes me think you aren't exactly a student of history.
It is the middle one that seems to string together a couple thoughts together, though.
Do you really think that liberalism established inalienable human rights, equality, and the notion of individual quality of life having universal value?
First of all, ironically in an ABORTION debate, I think you are very brave to even bring up inalienable human rights seeing as HOW THE FIRST INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT IS THE RIGHT TO LIFE!
Secondly, how is equality promoted when one life is snuffed out so another can keep her social schedule/career path?!
Finally, how would you describe the quality of life of an aborted fetus lying in a trash receptacle?
Sheesh.
- SolarSanitizer
July 29, 2009 11:32PM
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No life at all.
An aborted fetus has no life to qualify. It likely had little to speak of before the procedure, further. And in most cases it had less of a life to look forward to than had it been conceived by a consenting adult interested in being a parent.
Modern Liberalism is the body of thought that brought the Dark Ages into the modern (and post modern) world of egalitarianism, rule of law , and individualism. Here's a fair treatment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
See, not a student, but a teacher.
First paragraph in simple terminology: "By what criteria do you quantify life? How did you choose? Why not choose something else?"
Life is not a pile of cells. Not even a large old pile of cells. Even the dynamic life is not held in much esteem by most. Human chauvinism is rampant in regards to what life is "special". What makes life special is a different matter, and it is difficult in the extreme, if not impoosible, to determine objectively what is the value of life. If it must be subjective, then the carrying mother is the power of life for any organism that depends oh her. So who are you to judge? No- freaking-body, that's who; at least without your imaginary friends or the rule of law, which currently allows for the power of life we are talking about.
Even your loaded language and prejudicial tone do not explain what makes you think anyone should tell a woman what to do with part of her anatomy, besides herself.
So what criteria? I suppose you freak out when someone passes a tape worm, too? Maybe you are easily impressed, but I do not think it is necessarilly brave to challenge vitriolic miscategorizations based on tired dogma's fueled on self-righteous hypocracricy. Just a passing duty...
- Submariner July 30, 2009 1:08AM
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Modern Liberalism/Who am I?/Criteria
Modern Liberalism is effectivly just a bunch of people who agree in a few basic tenets:
1- Victim Mentality.
Modern Liberals are victims and think everyone else either owes them something or that they are entitled to something.
2- Selfishness above all.
Personal freedoms which encroah upon the freedoms of others are the most sought after. (Especially if that means that the other can be killed and thrown away.)
3- Fairness.
Everything must be fair. The caveat? Only the Liberal's idea of fair is considered.
All that other blather about ushering in a great new era or whatever is hogwash.
Who am I?
I am a member of this society . I am a single father, without whom a precious child would be in stuck in 18 years of foster "care". I am a voter. I am a compassionate human who is sure that a child is not a parasite. It might surprise you to learn that as half of "Parents" a father, like me, actually DOES have a say in these matters.
But hold on a second...
Why are you making this about me? Even if you wish to hang this around my neck to allow your petty insults to resonate, I reject it completely and point out that your insults are just that: Insults.
Criteria.
The only criteria /should/ be whether or not the baby is viable.
The haughty attitude and insults speak volumes, however. They tell me that you do not want this argument to continue, so, I'll let you off the hook. So, you can advocate killing otherwise viable babies, and I'll work to save them from folks like you.
Good day.
- SolarSanitizer
July 30, 2009 2:00AM
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different argument entirely
"Secondly, how is equality promoted when one life is snuffed out so another can keep her social schedule/career path?!"
The article wasn't about ELECTIVE abortion solar, the article was about women/girls DYING because abortion is now illegal in Nicaragua.
Saving a woman's life is a far cry from "snuffing out" a life for the sake of a woman's social schedule and/or career path.
So "sheesh" right back at you.
- JBarnett
July 30, 2009 8:01PM
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