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SAN SALVADOR, Aug 03 (IPS) – Pregnancies amongst women and adolescents proceed unabated in Central America, the place laws to forestall them, when it exists, is a useless letter, and governments are influenced by conservative sectors against intercourse schooling in faculties.
The latest incident reflecting this example was the Jul. 29 veto by Honduran President Xiomara Castro of an Integral Legislation for the Prevention of Adolescent Being pregnant, accredited by the single-chamber Congress on Mar. 8 and criticized by conservative teams and the nation’s political proper wing.
“We do not know the arguments behind the veto, however we may surmise that the regulation continues to be being held up by stress from these anti-rights teams,” lawyer Erika García, of the Girls’s Rights Middle, informed IPS from Tegucigalpa.
The affect of lobbying teams
Conservative sectors, united in “Por nuestros hijos” (“for our youngsters”), a Honduran model of the regional motion “Con mis Hijos no te Metas” (roughly “do not mess with my kids”), have opposed the regulation as a result of of their view it pushes “gender ideology”, as worldwide conservative populist teams name the present motion for the dissemination of ladies’s and LGBTI rights.
In June, the United Nations expressed concern about “disinformation campaigns” surrounding the Honduran regulation.
The final of the marches in favor of “household and kids” passed off in Tegucigalpa, the nation’s capital, on Jul. 22.
These teams “enchantment to individuals’s ignorance, to concern, to faith, with arguments that don’t have anything to do with actuality,” stated García. “They are saying, for instance, that folks will put skirts on boys and pants on women.”
In response to the United Nations Inhabitants Fund (UNFPA), one in 4 births is to a woman beneath 19 years of age in Honduras, giving the nation the second-highest teenage being pregnant fee in Latin America.
In response to the Honduran Penal Code having sexual relations with minors beneath 14 years of age is statutory rape, whether or not or not the woman consented.
In 2022, 1039 women beneath 14 gave start.
“The issue is sort of severe, and it’s aggravated by the dearth of public insurance policies to forestall pregnancies amongst women and adolescents,” García stated.
Within the nations of Central America, which have a mixed complete of some 50 million inhabitants, ultra-conservative views prevail with regards to sexual and reproductive well being and schooling.
In El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – in addition to the Dominican Republic within the Caribbean – abortion is banned beneath all circumstances, together with rape, incest or a menace to the mom’s life.
In the remainder of Central America, abortion is just permitted in sure circumstances.
The Honduran president vetoed the regulation beneath the formulation “return to Congress”, in order that it may be studied once more and finally ratified if two thirds of the 128 lawmakers approve it.
![Zuleyma Beltrán, 41, talked about becoming pregnant at the age of 15 because there is no proper sex education in El Salvador. A second pregnancy led to a miscarriage that landed her in jail in 1999, where many Salvadoran women who miscarry or have abortions end up due to a draconian anti-abortion law. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS](https://static.globalissues.org/ips/2023/08/aa.jpg)
“I did not even know what a condom was”
Nevertheless, having legal guidelines of this nature doesn’t be certain that the phenomenon shall be diminished, since laws is just not at all times enforced.
Since 2017 El Salvador has had a Nationwide Intersectoral Technique for the Prevention of Being pregnant in Ladies and Adolescents, and though the numbers have declined in recent times, they’re nonetheless excessive.
An UNFPA report famous that on this nation the being pregnant fee amongst women and adolescents dropped by greater than 50 % between 2015 and 2022.
Nevertheless, “it’s worrisome to see that El Salvador is among the 50 nations on the planet with the best fertility charges in women aged 10-14 years,” the UN company stated in its newest report, launched in July.
Amongst women aged 10-14, the examine famous, the being pregnant fee dropped by 59.6 %, from 4.7 women registered for prenatal care per 1000 women in 2015 to 1.9 in 2022.
The map of pregnancies in women and adolescents in El Salvador added that the nation “must additional speed up the tempo of discount, adopting insurance policies and methods tailored to the totally different realities of ladies aged 10-14 years and adolescents aged 15-19 years.”
Such actions should be “evidence-based,” the report pressured.
The reference seems to be an allusion to the prevalence of conservative attitudes of teams that, in Honduras for instance, reject sexual and reproductive schooling in faculties.
This lack of primary data about sexuality, in a context of structural poverty, led Zuleyma Beltrán to fall pregnant on the age of 15.
“Once I grew to become pregnant I did not even know what a condom was, I am not ashamed to say it,” Beltrán, now 41, informed IPS.
She added: “I suffered loads as a result of I did not know many issues, as a result of I lived in ignorance.”
Two years later, Beltrán grew to become pregnant once more however she miscarried, which landed her in jail in August 1999, accused of getting an abortion – a plight confronted by tons of of ladies in El Salvador.
El Salvador not solely bans abortion beneath any circumstances, even in instances of rape. It additionally imposes penalties of as much as 30 years in jail for ladies who’ve undergone abortions, and girls who find yourself within the hospital after struggling a miscarriage are sometimes prosecuted beneath the regulation as properly.
“The State ought to be ashamed of forcing these women to offer start and never giving them choices,” stated Anabel Recinos, of the Residents’ Affiliation for the Decriminalization of Abortion.
“The State doesn’t present women with intercourse schooling or sexual and reproductive well being, and when pregnancies or obstetric emergencies happen in consequence, it’s too merciless to them, it solely gives them jail,” she added.
Recinos stated that, on account of stress from conservative teams, the State has backed down on the technique of offering sexual and reproductive data in faculties.
“Now they’re extra rigorous in not permitting organizations working in that space to go and provides talks on complete intercourse schooling in faculties,” she famous.
Not even child formulation
In Guatemala, initiatives by civil society organizations that since 2017 have proposed, amongst different issues, that the State ought to provide reparations to pregnant women and adolescents, to alleviate their heavy burden, have made no progress both.
These proposals included the creation of scholarships, making it doable for ladies to proceed going to highschool whereas their infants had been cared for and obtained formulation.
“However sadly we’ve not been capable of take the following step, to get these measures in place,” stated Paula Barrios, basic coordinator of Girls Remodeling the World, in a phone dialog with IPS from the capital, Guatemala Metropolis.
Barrios stated that many of the customers of the companies supplied by this group, resembling authorized and psychological help, “are women and adolescents who’re pregnant due to sexual violence and are pressured to have their infants.”
She stated that within the final 5 years some 500,000 women beneath 14 years of age have change into pregnant, and the quantity is far increased when youngsters as much as 19 years of age are included.
“In the present day we’ve half one million women who we do not know what they and the youngsters who’re the merchandise of rape are consuming,” Barrios pressured, including that as in El Salvador and Honduras, in Guatemala, having intercourse with a woman beneath 14 years of age is taken into account statutory rape.
“Society sees it as regular that ladies are born to be moms, and so it would not matter if a woman will get pregnant on the age of 10 or 12 years, they only suppose she has achieved it slightly bit earlier,” she stated.
Patriarchy and capitalism
The specialists from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador consulted by IPS stated the foundation of the phenomenon is multi-causal, with aspects of patriarchy, particularly gender stereotypes and sexual violence.
“The patriarchy has an curiosity in stopping girls from going out into the general public sphere,” stated Barrios.
She stated the lifetime of a 10-year-old woman is reduce brief when she turns into pregnant. She is going to now not go to highschool and can stay within the home sphere, “to boost kids and keep at house.”
For her half, Garcia, the lawyer from Honduras, identified that there’s additionally an underlying “system of oppression” that’s intertwined with patriarchy and colonialism, which is the affect of a hegemonic nation or area.
“We’ve women giving start to low cost labor to feed the (capitalist) system, and there’s a larger feminization of poverty, women giving start to women whose future prospects are ruined,” she stated.
Within the meantime, to keep away from a repeat of her ordeal, Beltrán stated she talks to and teaches her nine-year-old daughter about sexuality.
“With the intention to hold her from repeating my story, I discuss to her about condoms, how a lady has to care for herself and the way she will be able to get pregnant,” she stated.
“I do not need her to undergo what I did,” she stated.
© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedUnique supply: Inter Press Service
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