fuckers

of course the ban is killing women- if you illegalize abortion, women aren't just happily going to comply and smoothly bring unwanted pregnancies to term.
i'd like to know what effect the maternal death rate has on the products of conception for these women-were they born alive and healthy? if so, were they then put up for adoption?

Yet another example of how "pro-life" is really "forced pregnancy even unto death."

Agree with all of you. I posted something about Georgia and how one of its state Representatives are now introducing one of the most draconian pieces of legislation ever thought of, the Human Life Amendment. Here is the link:

http://aikenareaprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/10/taliban-like-amendment-to-be-introduced.html

This was the very first thing I posted on my new Google blog. It was up on the Lycos blog a few days ealrier.

Fuck that shit. It's great to hear that people are fighting back.

Maybe it's just me and my sexual-assault-centre-volunteer hypersensitivity, but does the word "victim" used to describe survivors make anyone else cringe?

I think it's important to note this law effects women with wanted pregnancies too. Doctors in Nicaragua are now too afraid of losing their license to help women with ectopic pregnancies, incomplete miscarrages or other fatal complications. This law shows a fundamental lack of respect for women's humanity.

An ectopic pregnancy should not be a death sentence!

CarmelizedMe, you're right--I usually do use the word survivor.

Andi's right -- doctors aren't even treating conditions for which it would be PERFECTLY LEGAL even under to total ban to end a pregnancy.

Something else I found utterly appalling is that the Ortega government isn't even bothering to make sure that doctors are still providing legal emergency obstetric treatment, and they aren't even measuring the impact of the total ban, or investigating unusual deaths.

That's right: the government is so convinced that health care for women is unnecessary and a waste of effort that they're not even going to make sure their docs are meeting the most basic standards of care.

And a plug for the report: it's a pretty easy read for this kind of report. Not too long or too jargon-y. Check it out!

kir:
"That's right: the government is so convinced that health care for women is unnecessary and a waste of effort that they're not even going to make sure their docs are meeting the most basic standards of care."

where do you think this attitude comes from? religious misogyny?

"where do you think this attitude comes from? religious misogyny?"

Which reminds me, one of the "Ads by Google" I just saw here has the headline "The sinfulness of NFP" and the link www/mostholyfamilymonastery.com

13lesslee asked if I thought the deliberate ignorance of the impact of the ban was a result of religious misogyny. I would certainly say that some misogyny is at play there, as well as class discrimination (wealthy women are not the ones dying in public hospitals), but even worse is some CYA: if they don't investigate the deaths, then there's no official record that the deaths are their fault, you know?

On another note, I contacted the researcher to clarify something that was bothering me, which is the number of deaths actually caused by abortion. Here's what she said: "According to MINSA [Ministry of Health] statistics, there have been at least 80 maternal deaths (the actual number at last count was 82). Eleven of those can be attributed to abortion-related causes. Again, these are MINSA stats and even they agree that there is at least 30% underreporting."

This is not to minimize the problem -- even one death because of this law is too many, and a profound violation of human rights.