Vol. 73/No. 37      September 28, 2009

While technically illegal under the criminal code, “therapeutic” abortions when a woman’s life is in danger are openly performed in hospitals in the Dominican Republic.

In other cases, thousands of women go to back-alley abortionists or attempt to self-induce abortions, said Miriam Mejia, deputy director of Alianza Dominicana, a social services center in New York’s Dominican community. “Women in the Dominican Republic get abortions under horrendous conditions,” Mejia told the Militant. “This article would make the situation even worse.”

Mejia helped circulate a petition signed by 100 Dominicans who live in New York protesting the proposed constitutional change.

Anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 abortions are carried out every year in the Dominican Republic, an island nation of less than 10 million people. No doctor or women has ever been prosecuted under the criminal code.

The Maternity Hospital Altagracia in Santo Domingo reported it performed 6,300 abortions last year, more than 80 percent on teenagers. Many of these were the result of complications from home use of Misoprostol, a medicine used to induce abortions, which can cause severe hemorrhaging. Like most non-narcotic medicines in the Dominican Republic, it can be purchased without a doctor’s prescription.

Aldrian Almonte, president of the Dominican Gynecology and Obstetrics Society in Santo Domingo, told Inter Press News Agency (IPS) that the high maternal death rate there—132 per 100,000 births—is largely because of unsafe abortions.

If Article 30 is passed “what are we going to do before the presence of a woman with severe preeclampsia or eclampsia, convulsing in any emergency room around the country?” Almonte asked. “See her die to protect ourselves from the repercussions that Article 30 stipulates?” Eclampsia is a life threatening condition of convulsions that can occur in a pregnant woman with high blood pressure, which often leads to coma.

“We are proposing decriminalizing abortion in case of danger to a woman’s life, incest, or rape,” Graciela de la Cruz, from the Solidarity Center for Women’s Development, said in a phone interview from Santo Domingo. She was part of the September 8 march, which began at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo and marched to the Congress.

A coalition of dozens of organizations, including women’s groups, medical associations, and trade unions, have formed a coalition to oppose Article 30, she said.

The amendment passed a first reading in a joint session of the Dominican Senate and House of Representatives with 167 votes in favor and 32 against, de la Cruz said. It won’t become law unless it passes a second reading.

Article 30 was proposed by President Leonel Fernández, from the Dominican Liberation Party and has the backing of the Dominican Revolutionary Party, a social-democratic party that is the main opposition group in the legislature. The Catholic Church and some evangelical churches have been actively campaigning for the antiabortion amendment.

“A recent Gallup-Hoy poll shows that 80 percent of our people are for the right to abortion when the woman’s life is in danger,” de la Cruz said. “We can win this fight.”
 
 
Related articles:
‘Health reform’ plan aimed against workers
Measures target abortion rights, immigrants
D.C. protest opposes cops enforcing immigration law
How U.S. rulers eroded abortion rights after 1973  
 
 
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