Congress in Honduras prohibits abortion pill

Apr 7, 2009 / 11:23 am

The House of Representatives in Honduras has approved a law prohibiting “the morning-after pill” as unconstitutional because of its abortifacient nature. The full Congress approved the measure which bans the purchase, sale, use and distribution of the morning-after pill.

The measure was sponsored by Liberal Party Representative Martha Lorena Alvarado and supported by a statement from the Medical College of Honduras, which pointed out the pill’s abortifacient effects.

The emergency contraceptive pill “is a hormonal bomb that acts directly in the body causing thousands of physical changes in girls, who are the ones taking it the most, 12, 14 and 16 year-old girls take it after a night of partying, making it a pharmaceutical abortion,” Alvarado said.

Abortion is unconstitutional in Honduras.

Alvarado noted that the sale of the drug has been criminalized in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru and Argentina,” because it has been shown to be an abortifacient and very harmful to the youth.”

Representative Silvia Ayala of the Democratic Unification Party said the World Health Organization issued a statement claiming the pill is not an abortifacient. However, the WHO’s statement only considers abortion to take place after implantation, and therefore it does not see the elimination of an embryo between conception and implantation as an abortion.

Alvarado pointed out that Ayala’s arguments are part of a political agenda of groups financed by international organizations determined to make abortion a human right.