CLOSED: End the dangerous ban on abortion in Nicaragua

This action is now closed. Thank you to all those who have taken this action. For updates and more actions related to women's rights, visit www.amnesty.org.uk/women

Women and girls who have been raped are being denied access to abortion services in Nicaragua. This is a grave human rights abuse.

The Nicaraguan authorities must take urgent action to repeal the ban, and to guarantee access to safe and legal abortion services where continuing with a pregnancy endangers a womans or girls life or health, or where the woman or girl is the victim of rape.

Background information

All forms of abortion have been criminalised in Nicaragua since July 2008.

Women and girls who seek an abortion, even those pregnant as a result of rape or those whose lives or health are in danger if the pregnancy continues, now face long prison sentences.

The law also leaves women and girls who have suffered a spontaneous miscarriage vulnerable to prosecution, since they may be wrongly suspected of having induced an abortion.
 

By banning access to abortion services to victims of sexual violence, the law condemns all pregnant rape victims, even those who are still children themselves, to carry such pregnancies to term regardless of their wishes or the risks to their physical or mental wellbeing.

For many child rape victims the abuser is a member of their own family, meaning that the current law obliges girls in many cases to give birth to their own brother or sister.

The impact of such draconian bans falls most severely on women and girls from less affluent backgrounds. Women with few economic resources and fewer safe options may feel compelled to act outside the law and seek a “back street” abortion, endangering their health and risking imprisonment. Laws like the total abortion ban in Nicaragua lead to an increase in the number of such unsafe and illegal abortions.

The Nicaraguan government has taken an extremely regressive step with the introduction of this law. The authorities must take urgent action to repeal the ban, and to guarantee access to safe and legal abortion services where continuing with a pregnancy endangers a woman’s or girl’s life or health, or where the woman or girl is the victim of rape.

On 28 September, Amnesty International is adding its voice to a regional call for the decriminalisation of abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean. Women and girls in Nicaragua and throughout the region have the right to life and to live with dignity.
 

• Find out more about our campaign for maternal health

This action is now closed. Thank you to all those who have taken this action. For updates and more actions related to women's rights, visit www.amnesty.org.uk/women

Women and girls who have been raped are being denied access to abortion services in Nicaragua. This is a grave human rights abuse.

The Nicaraguan authorities must take urgent action to repeal the ban, and to guarantee access to safe and legal abortion services where continuing with a pregnancy endangers a womans or girls life or health, or where the woman or girl is the victim of rape.

Follow up

We continue to work on this crucial issue, but have closed this campaign action for the time being. Please support the rights of women and girls in Nicaragua by taking this alternative action: Stop sexual violence against Nicaraguan girls