Amnesty International accuses governments in Latin America of
dangerous levels of discrimination against women by restricting
contraception and abortion
El Salvador: ‘I had a miscarriage. The judge accused me of murder.’
El Salvador: ‘I had a miscarriage. The judge accused me of murder.’
The Zika epidemic in Latin America highlights dangerous levels of discrimination against women in reproductive healthcare, according to a report released today by Amnesty International.
In a study of restrictions on contraception and abortion, the human rights group accuses governments in the region of propagating violence against women who are at risk of arrest, injury or death if they illegally terminate pregnancies.
These longstanding problems have been thrown into sharp relief by the spread of the Zika virus, which is believed to cause foetal abnormalities and has prompted some governments to urge women to postpone having babies.
The authors say this is “absurd and insulting” because 97% of the women in Latin America and the Caribbean of reproductive age live in countries where access to safe abortion is severely restricted by law.
“The debate on the Zika virus underscores the central message set out by Amnesty International in this report: violence against women will not be eradicated unless states in the region change discriminatory legislation, public policies and practices in the area of sexual and reproductive health,” the report states.
It reveals that sexual and reproductive rights, including access to contraception, abortions or sterilisations, vary enormously from country to country and person to person.
Seven countries – Chile, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Suriname and the Dominican Republic – prohibit abortion in all circumstances, the authors note. With the exception of Cuba, almost all of the other nations in the region impose strict limits, though whether or not they are applied usually depends on the wealth of the patient, and the personal and religious views of the health professionals or public officials.
Even in Uruguay, which has some of the most liberal laws on the continent since legalising abortion in 2012, some health professionals have refused to carry out terminations and declared themselves “conscientious objectors” on religious grounds.
The controls imposed by governments and lack of consistency among doctors and nurses means that women and girls are often not trusted or empowered to make their own decisions. As a result, many are forced to seek “back street” unsafe abortions – which were the cause of at least one in 10 maternal deaths across the region in 2014, the group says.
“This outrageous and utterly illegal lottery-style approach to healthcare is putting thousands of lives at risk,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International. “These absurd regulations and practices show that violence, which sometimes amounts to torture, and discrimination against women is not only tolerated but promoted by the state.”
The report – The State as a Catalyst For Violence Against Women – includes several harrowing examples of women who have suffered as a result of laws or government policies.
Among them is Rosaura Almonte Hernández, a 16-year-old from the Dominican Republic who died of leukaemia in 2012 after doctors refused an abortion that would have allowed her to get urgent treatment for her cancer.
They also cite the case of Mainumby, a 10-year-old rape victim in Paraguay who was denied an abortion and kept in “essentially prison conditions” until she gave birth.
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