Women who undergo the operation and anyone who aids them can be jailed up to six years.

The National Assembly had approved the measure October 26, shortly before the presidential elections, with the overwhelming support of both major parties, the Liberal Alliance and Ortega’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). It was backed by three of the four main presidential candidates.

Abortion was already illegal in Nicaragua before the new law, but an abortion was permitted if three doctors certified that the pregnant woman's life would be in danger or in case of rape or incest, and only if the woman obtained the consent of her spouse or other close relative.

Women’s rights supporters in Nicaragua have staged protests and other events protesting the ban. The new law has been condemned by women's rights organizations and medical associations both in Nicaragua and abroad.

"It is a crime against poorer women and an open violation to universal human rights and the Constitution," said Dr. Ana María Pizarro of the Nicaraguan Society of Gynecologists and Obstetricians.

Bolaños signed the bill into law despite his previous demand that it include much stiffer prison sentences—up to 30 years—for women undergoing an abortion and anyone helping them.

Two years ago Bolaños’s party, the Constitutional Liberals, sought to increase the sentence for abortions—which at that time was one to three years in prison—to 20 years. FSLN legislators proposed an eight-year sentence.

The Nicaraguan daily La Prensa reported November 4 on what appeared to be the first known case of a death resulting from the new legislation. Two days earlier a pregnant woman, Jazmina Bojorge Rodríguez, 18, who had been admitted to a Managua hospital with high fever, died after being denied treatment she pleaded for.

Even a day after it was determined that the fetus had died in her uterus, doctors refused to remove it. “According to discussions with the doctors, there was fear about operating sooner, because they were afraid they would be penalized for performing a therapeutic abortion," Pizarro told La Prensa. In addition, the facility lacked ultrasound equipment and Bojorge had to be transferred to another hospital, where she died.  
 
 
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