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March 13, 2008
Bolivian women
Ipas has joined with other agencies to improve treatment for women who are victims of sexual violence.
Photo courtesy of Richard Lord.

Ipas Bolivia and Ipas Central America each marked International Women’s Day with activities to promote public awareness of the need for safe abortion care to save women’s lives.

Ipas Bolivia created a four-page, full-color insert discussing sexual violence for the six largest national newspapers: La Razón, La Prensa, Los Tiempos, El Deber, Correo del Sur and El Nuevo Día. The insert highlights ways that service providers, social networks, national and local authorities, the media and other groups can work together to combat sexual violence and help the victims. One section documents Ipas’s work with health-care providers, police and the court system to create a protocol to collect evidence in cases of sexual violence; efforts to allow women who have been victims of sexual violence to seek legal abortions; and Ipas-Bolivia’s work to help persecute perpetrators of sexual violence. The insert also discusses needs that women, adolescents, men and community organizations face when combating sexual violence, as well as strategies for the future.

In Nicaragua, Ipas Central America joined with other members of the Strategic Group for the Decriminalization of Therapeutic Abortion in sponsoring public showing of The Cider House Rules, followed by a period of reflection and open discussion afterward. Around 150 people, including students, professors, activists and service providers, attended the screening. The 1999 film stars Michael Caine as the director of an orphanage who also provides abortions in secret, and Tobey Maguire as an orphan who becomes his protégé.

In November 2006, Nicaragua became only the third country in the Western Hemisphere to ban abortion under any circumstances. Since that time, an investigation by Human Rights Watch has documented that women have been denied life- or health-saving abortion services, as well as other emergency obstetric treatment. The investigation also showed women had become afraid to even seek treatment for pregnancy-related complications, for fear of being accused for having undergone an illegal abortion.

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258