One step forward, two steps back

Many on the left look at the nations of Latin America for inspiration and hope, given the general leftward tilt of the region over the last six years. However, it also remains a profoundly patriarchal culture...:

With the exception of Cuba, every nation in this predominantly Catholic region either totally prohibits abortion or limits it to extreme circumstances. And while the global trend over the past decade has been to liberalize abortion laws, efforts to do so in Latin America have been met by an equally determined campaign to strengthen them further.

... and such a culture has consequences:

Jazmina Bojorge arrived at Managua's Fernando Vélez Paiz Hospital on a Tuesday evening, nearly five months pregnant and racked with fever and abdominal pain. By the following Thursday morning, both the pretty 18-year-old and the female fetus in her womb were dead.

The mystery of what happened during the intervening 36 hours might not ordinarily have catapulted Bojorge into the headlines of a nation with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the Western Hemisphere.

But a week before her death on Nov. 2, Nicaragua's legislature had voted to ban all abortions, eliminating long-standing exceptions for rape, malformation of the fetus and risk to the life or health of the mother. Now, outraged opponents of the legislation have declared Bojorge its first victim.

"It's clear that fear of punishment kept the doctors from doing what they needed to do to save her -- which was to abort the pregnancy immediately," said Juanita Jiménez of the Women's Autonomous Movement, an advocacy group that is leading the campaign to reverse the ban. "This is exactly what we warned would happen if this law was passed. We've been taken back to the Middle Ages."