“What happened to me shattered my dreams, my hopes – I wanted to be someone who worked outside the home but I spend all day at home looking after the baby…I can’t even sleep and I feel very unsafe, many of my days are a nightmare, it’s very hard to carry on and I feel very sad and very tired,” said “M”, who was raped at age 17 by a relative.
Even though she was a victim of incest and rape, “M”, who spoke with representatives of Amnesty International on their visit to Nicaragua last week, was unable to abort the pregnancy because of the ban on “therapeutic abortion” in place in this Central American country, one of the poorest in the hemisphere, since 2008.
“Nicaragua’s ban on therapeutic abortion is a disgrace,” Amnesty International’s Executive Deputy Secretary General Kate Gilmore said at a news briefing held Monday in Mexico City to present the report.
“It is a human rights scandal that ridicules medical science and distorts the law into a weapon against the provision of essential medical care to pregnant girls and women,” the Australian sociologist added.
One health worker told Amnesty researchers that one woman who was admitted to hospital following a miscarriage was so terrified of being prosecuted for abortion that she asked doctors not to treat her in case any treatment was seen as an intentional termination of pregnancy.
“She told the health worker that she was concerned that her neighbor, who knew she was pregnant, might report her for having an abortion,” the report said.
Amnesty International delegates met with young girls who, having been subjected to sexual violence at the hands of close family members or friends, were compelled to carry the resulting pregnancies to term –giving birth in many instances to their own brothers or sisters –because they were denied access to alternatives. It is deeply troubling that there was a recorded rise in pregnant teenagers committing suicide by consuming poison in 2008.
Obstetricians, gynaecologists and family doctors in Nicaragua told Amnesty International that under this Penal Code they can no longer legally provide effective medical treatment for life threatening diseases in pregnant women and girls because of the potential risk to the foetus.
I’m choosing to only present the facts because the inhumanity presented doesn’t require comment to prove it. This is femicide.
The question to Ortega has special poignancy as he was accused by his own stepdaughter sexually abusing her for years starting at age 11. This case was thrown out of court in Nicaragua, but she successfully brought her charge before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Costa Rica. Links: http://www.incakolanews.blogsp...../08/pres...
http://books.google.com/books?.....#038;amp...
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-97252531.html