Nicaraguan ob-gyn society urges lawmakers not to risk women's lives by criminalizing abortion

Incidence of pre-adolescent sexual assault and pregnancy raises the stakes as the abortion debate intensifies in Nicaragua and throughout much of Latin America.

Amid heated public controversy over the fate of a pregnant 11-year-old rape victim, the Nicaraguan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology this week urged the Central American country’s National Assembly to maintain the penal code’s provision allowing so-called “therapeutic abortion,” or pregnancy termination when deemed necessary by three physicians.

In full-page notices published Wednesday in Nicaragua’s two leading newspapers, the 52-year-old professional association representing nearly 200 obstetrician-gynecologists called on parliamentarians to heed their technical and scientific experience and to respect the difficult medical and ethical decisions that confront both women and their doctors. The statement notes that doctors’ duties to preserve life and to care for women, including protecting them from the dangers of unsafe abortion, often pose conflicts, forcing them to decide between the life of a gravely ill woman and that of her fetus.

Criminalization of abortion would put physicians in a no-win situation, the statement said, subjecting them to the risk of imprisonment both for performing therapeutic abortion to save a woman’s life and for failing to do so and causing a woman’s death from pregnancy-related causes.

Noting that therapeutic abortion was first legally permitted in Nicaragua in 1837, the physicians’ society urged lawmakers not to erase 160 years of history. The statement emphasized that, according to recent surveys, more than 95 percent of Nicaraguan ob-gyns oppose criminalization of abortion.

“Certainly, Nicaragua’s ob-gyns are experts on what is best for women’s health,” said Dra. Marta Maria Blandon, Director of Ipas Central America. “For lawmakers not to accept the advice of these specialists—who know all too well the danger that unsafe, clandestine abortion poses to women—would be tragic.”

Anti-choice forces in Nicaragua are taking advantage of the National Assembly’s current review of the country’s penal code to encourage lawmakers to make abortion a crime in all cases. Advocates insist that such a move would only exacerbate deaths and injuries of women and girls from unsafe abortion. A recent Ipas report suggests that as many as 32,000 abortions occur every year in Nicaragua and that approximately 5,500 women seek treatment for abortion complications.

The legislative debate over abortion is taking place against a backdrop of public controversy prompted by a series of cases of young girls impregnated as a result of sexual abuse. The first of these was “Rosa,” an 8-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by a neighbor and whose difficulty obtaining a safe abortion sparked international headlines in 2003. Women’s groups, including Ipas, are now rallying in support of a pregnant 11-year-old who was raped by her stepfather and is now in government custody.

“This girl’s case is another in a long line of clear examples of the necessity of therapeutic abortion,” said Blandon. “Who with an ounce of compassion would force her, or others like her, to carry to term a pregnancy that endangers her life?”

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