Managua, Nicaragua, Dec 21, 2007 / 09:27 am
Three prominent Nicaraguans have reacted to an Associated Press story that claimed that Nicaragua’s new strict anti-abortion law had cost women’s lives, calling the report “misleading and grossly inaccurate.”
The November 27 AP story, "Nicaraguan abortion ban proves deadly," claimed at least three women and possibly twelve more had died because of the ban.
A letter to the Washington Times challenged the story. Its signatories were Dr. Walter Mendieta, president of the Nicaraguan Medical Association; Lucia Bohemer, president of the Nicaraguan Association of Women; and Dr. Rafael J. Cabrera, the rector of the University of Medical Sciences in Managua.
The letter said that the November, 2006 law further restricting abortion removed an “outdated, phony, ‘therapeutic’ abortion exception” that was open to abuse and “incompatible with modern medical, moral and legal principles.”
The writers claimed that in the first 47 weeks of 2007, after the law went into effect, maternal deaths declined 23 percent. These deaths include all deaths from the beginning of pregnancy until six weeks after delivery, including accidents, murders, suicide, and non-obstetrical deaths. Eighty percent of the deaths resulted from conditions at the end of pregnancy, such as ecclampsia, hemorrhages, and puerperal sepsis.
The letter flatly denied the AP’s fatality report, saying “No woman has died in Nicaragua for not having a "therapeutic" abortion since the practice was banned in November 2006.”