Nicaragua's Abortion Ban

The Boston Globe reports on Nicaragua's no-exceptions abortion ban:

[18 year-old Carmen] Bojorge was awaiting her second child when she and her 5-month-old fetus died this month in a public hospital in Managua. Bojorge's family says they took her to a hospital when she complained of limb pains and weakness. When her condition worsened, doctors say they determined her fetus was dead, but Bojorge went into shock before they could save her.

"Now there is a dead woman, an orphaned son, a destroyed family, and this will not be the only case," prosecutor Débora Grandison told the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario. Grandison said outlawing therapeutic abortions was "condemning women to death."

The mother of the deceased teen doesn't understand the logic behind the law . If the doctors realized that fetal distress was putting the mother in danger, said Rosa Argentina Rodríguez Bojorge, "They could've at least saved my daughter so she could take care of her other child."

If negligence is proved, the Bojorge case "is a big warning that doctors are going to interpret the wording of the law very literally," said Azahalea Solís Román, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in Nicaragua. The center will appeal to the Nicaraguan human rights council and the Supreme Court, arguing that the law violates a women's right to life.

Wilfredo Navarro, a national assemblyman who supported the ban, accused abortion activists and doctors of fueling an unwarranted scare as part of a campaign to overturn the law. "There's no going back. If doctors are going to kill babies, they can only do it outside of Nicaragua," he said.

Jean Raber has more thoughts on the case over at Commonweal.