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Raids Fuel Abortion Debate in Dominican Republic    [

    Proposed Law to Legalize Abortion Roils Mexico City
    By Laurence Iliff
    The Dallas Morning News

    Friday 30 March 2007

    Mexico City - Wealthy Mexicans have long gone to Dallas or Houston for medical procedures not available at home - including abortions. Now, this increasingly liberal capital is likely to legalize the controversial procedure next month, allowing anyone with a bus ticket and a few hundred dollars to end a pregnancy.

    The proposed law, now supported by a large majority in the Mexico City legislative assembly, would allow women to have an abortion up to 12 weeks into their pregnancy if having the child "would negatively affect their life project." Currently, Mexican states allow abortion only under circumstances such as rape or to protect the health of the mother.

    Supporters of abortion rights say that up to a million illegal abortions every year take the lives of thousands of poor women, often under gruesome circumstances. The new law is crafted along the lines of those in modern democracies with respect for women's choices, they say.

    Opponents say Mexico is following its northern neighbor down the slippery slope of moral relativism and abandoning its Catholic tradition, which opposes abortion. Sacrificing unborn children to save an unknown number of women who die during the illegal procedure is not a fair trade-off, they say.

    The explosive debate will continue through Holy Week, which culminates in Easter Sunday. Mexico is nominally 90 percent Roman Catholic.

    Under the proposed Mexico City law, visiting Americans could also have abortions at private and public clinics, according to lawmakers. Minors could have abortions but, whether Mexican or foreign, they would face a legal review if their parents are opposed.

    "You have so many Americans that already go to Mexico for dental work, surgery; if this is laid wide open, I think it's going to allow access for anyone to have abortions," said Aurora Tinajero, director of Spanish Ministry for the Pro-Life Committee of North Texas.

    Latin America is generally against abortion, she said, with Mexico City now setting a dangerous precedent.

    "The bottom line is abortion is killing, abortion is murder," said Tinajero, whose group is also known as the Respect Life Ministry for the Diocese of Dallas. "It is very troubling for Catholics of Mexican descent to look south and see this is happening."

    In Latin America, only Cuba and Guyana have abortion laws similar to the one being considered in Mexico City, according to international abortion rights groups. About 8.5 million people live in the Mexican capital and another 9.5 million in the suburbs.

    With more Roman Catholics than any country except Brazil, and with a conservative government in power, Mexican abortion opponents are fighting back with marches and flyers and photos of fetuses prior to the expected mid-April vote.

    "They (proponents) say it's a problem of a woman's right over her body, and they put to one side the right of aborted boys and girls over their bodies," Catholic Cardinal Norberto Rivera, the archbishop of Mexico City, said during Sunday Mass. "Laws, whatever they are, are intended to respect life. A law that does not is ungodly."

    Abortion opponents fear that - like Mexico City's recent law recognizing civil unions for gay couples - allowing legal abortion in the capital could spur similar legislation around the country, ending this nation of 105 million's relatively strict anti-abortion laws once and for all.

    Some conservative groups see the push for a more liberal abortion law - along with trends like growing recreational drug use and falling church attendance - as a sign that the country is losing its moral moorings.

    "We are seeing social decomposition, unfortunately, and attacks on family values," said Jorge Serrano Limon, head of the National Pro-Life Committee. "Abortion is a crime, as is the sexual lewdness we are seeing on TV, along with civil unions."

    Serrano Limon said that 40 city legislators support the abortion law and 21 are opposed, which means his group needs to persuade 12 to change their position.

    The leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution controls the city legislature and the mayor's office. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who has veto power over the city legislature, has said he supports the abortion bill. The party is also pushing a nationwide abortion bill in Congress, where chances of passage are slimmer.

    President Felipe Calderon of the conservative National Action Party said he opposes the legalization of abortion and believes the current laws are adequate.

    Mexico City legislator Jorge Carlos Diaz Cuervo, a key supporter of the abortion bill for the Alternative party, said Mexicans are increasingly becoming aware that they have individual rights, including a women's right to control her body.

    "I think there has been a cultural shift that has to do with the subject of rights," said Diaz Cuervo. "We have been a very hypocritical society; there are things they we have not wanted to acknowledge."

    One of those is abortion, he said.

    A study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico estimates there are half a million to 1 million illegal abortions a year - in doctor's offices for those who can afford it, and through self-induced wounds or toxic teas for those who cannot.

    "It's a reality that we cannot continue to hide when it's an issue of public health," Diaz Cuervo said. Officially, 1,500 women have died in the last decade from botched abortions, although that figure is likely to be much higher, he added, since few doctors or victims report their participation in an illegal activity.

    Legal abortion also means that there will be fewer unwanted children in the future and a reduction in the social problems associated with them, like crime, Diaz Cuervo said.

    Abortion opponent Alejandra Garrido, 23, said Mexico City's law will draw young women from all over the country and pressure more states to allow abortion on demand.

    "Young women are going to come here (to Mexico City) to get abortions, which is logical, and then more and more states are going to consider something similar," said Garrido, 23, a member of the anti-abortion group Young Citizens for Dignity.

    "We are against abortion because we believe the right to life is a fundamental human right," said Garrido, adding that her group also supports better sex education to help young women avoid unwanted pregnancies.

    Fliers handed out by Young Citizens for Dignity include one that compares Mexico's strict environmental laws with the capital's plan to legalize abortion during the first trimester.

    "Turtle eggs are protected by law," reads the flier, with pictures of turtle eggs in one hand and a tiny baby in another. "Now, unborn children won't be."

    Opinion polls show that most Mexico City residents support abortion rights up to the 12-week limit, although national polls show a near-equal split.

 

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    Raids Fuel Abortion Debate in Dominican Republic
    By Frances Robles
    McClatchy Newspapers

    Tuesday 27 March 2007

    Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic - Two months pregnant and bleeding, Yanira Then says she went to a clinic in her low-income Santo Domingo neighborhood, where her doctor said she had suffered a miscarriage.

    Then was still in her hospital gown that February morning when her doctor's office was stormed by police, prosecutors and television news cameras. Accused of having had an abortion, Then, a 27-year-old law student, was arrested along with two other patients, the nurses and her physician.

    She faces 3 to 10 years in prison. The doctor faces 50.

    Saying that he wants to spark a public debate on preventing unwanted pregnancies, Santo Domingo's district attorney last month arrested 12 people and closed three clinics he described as well-known illegal abortion mills.

    In a region where abortion is largely illegal - Cuba and Guyana are the only nations that permit it - what has long been tolerated in hushed tones and back rooms suddenly was splashed onto the front page, infuriating women's groups.

    "I swear to you, God, and everyone, I did not have an abortion," said Then, insisting she had a routine post-miscarriage procedure. "I think abortion is a crime. We don't have the right to take life from anyone. It's not in the law or the Bible either."

    Then said she is in a stable relationship with her boyfriend, with whom she already has a toddler, and can well afford another child. What's more, she had several prior pre-natal care visits, proof that she was trying to keep her baby, not abort it, both she and her doctor said.

    "This birth was planned," she said. "These charges are illogical."

    Lawyers and doctors involved in the case said the majority of abortions performed in the Dominican Republic are the result of misprostol, an ulcer medication often taken illegally as a way to induce abortion. Doctors say bleeding women regularly show up at their offices after taking the medicine, and that now the physicians risk jailtime for treating their patients.

    Defense lawyers said prosecutors will be hard-pressed to keep doctors from treating women who show up bleeding.

    "Go to all the hospitals in town, and there are lines of women bleeding," said Then's physician, Numas Perez. "They take the ulcer medication, get infections, and then you have to attend to them. It's the end of what was a pregnancy.

    "I don't go out on a loudspeaker announcing: 'Come, I'll take care of it!' but they arrive, and you take care of it."

    Perez' private clinic remains closed, and he's not practicing while the charges are pending, but his lawyers are fighting to have it reopened.

    Experts say the Dominican Republic has one of the region's highest abortion rates, and also a high number of women hospitalized after illegal abortions. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, a group that conducts sexual and reproductive health research and policy analysis, a survey conducted in the early 1990s showed 82,000 illegal abortions a year in the Dominican Republic.

    The Dominican Republic's rate of 44 abortions per 1,000 women is more than double the rate in the United States, where abortion is legal on demand, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.

    Despite having some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world, Latin America has the second highest rate of terminated pregnancies in the world, according to U.N. figures. Only Eastern Europe's is higher than this region's rate of 37 per 1,000 women of childbearing age. The U.N. figures estimate that 4 million abortions take place in Latin America annually - and 5,000 women die each year from complications.

    According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 1990 and 2000, each year there were four to 11 deaths per year related to legal abortion in the United States.

    The Guttmacher Institute says 10 out of every 1,000 women of child-bearing age wind up in hospitals each year in the Dominican Republic after illegal abortions. The criminal sweep, the group says, is likely to push the number higher, because it will make it more difficult to find doctors willing to risk performing illegal abortions.

    "In general the likely consequence is: reduction in safe clandestine services, at least for some period of time, and likely increase in unsafe procedures, with a rise in health complications and in admissions to hospital," said the group's vice president for research, Dr. Susheela Singh. The arrests are "unlikely to result in a decline in the number of abortions."

    Doctor's Association President Enriquillo Matos said that after the arrests, Dominican doctors will likely think twice when treating such cases.

    "We feel threatened as doctors," Matos said. "The drama of abortion is a social drama, cultural drama and economic. Finally, lastly, medical."

    In the past year, many women's groups in Latin America have lobbied to loosen restrictions on abortions, pushing for changes that would permit them in cases of rape. Colombia's Constitutional Court agreed to the change, while Nicaragua's legislature went the other way, lifting such exceptions and now banning abortions all together. Brazil and Uruguay are also debating approving such exceptions.

    The U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade allows a woman to end a pregnancy at least until fetal viability, which is determined by a physician. After viability, states may restrict abortions or ban them entirely, except when necessary to protect the woman's life or health, Singh said.

    Proposed changes to the penal code in the Dominican Republic, which would allow abortion in cases of rape, have been on hold in the legislature.

    "The congress wants the new law, but they don't want to fight the church or the doctors," said attorney Carlos Olivares, who represents Dr. Perez. "I believe this case is undoubtedly related to the proposed new penal code."

    The Archdiocese in Santo Domingo did not return several messages seeking comment.

    Santo Domingo District Attorney Jose Manuel Hernandez denied any connection between the arrests and the penal code proposals, but added that he did hope to instigate a debate on issues such as allowing condom distribution or the morning-after pill.

    "This is a matter of public health, and we have to determine what our public health policy is," he said in an interview. "The discussion has begun. That's what we wanted."

    His office conducted a five-month investigation of the three clinics, even tapping the doctors' cell phones and sending undercover agents posing as couples. He said tapes show the doctors freely discussed prices and procedures.

    "Everyone knows what goes on at these places, and nobody was doing anything," he said. "Ask nine out of 10 Dominicans, and they will tell you the doctors should be punished.... That's a message that needs attention."