Honduras to legalize morning-after tablet for rape victims By Reuters

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Honduras will authorize the usage of the morning-after tablet for rape victims after greater than a decade of complete restrictions, the nation’s well being minister introduced late on Monday, although an entire ban on abortion continues.

The closely Catholic Central American nation launched an absolute ban on the use and sale of the morning-after tablet in 2009, however had hinted at softening its stance in excessive instances for a number of years.

The one Latin American nation presently with an all-out ban on the morning-after tablet, Honduras additionally punishes ladies who’ve abortions with as much as six years in jail, together with in instances of rape or incest.

“We’re going to make the tablet obtainable for rape victims as a result of it’s not a contraceptive methodology,” Well being Minister Jose Matheu mentioned throughout an occasion with ladies’s organizations on Monday night time. “We’re ready for it to come back out of the laws unit to signal it off.”

It stays unclear how well being authorities would confirm rape allegations or distribute the tablet.

Feminist organizations say the most recent shift in coverage does not go practically far sufficient to take care of undesirable pregnancies, particularly in a rustic with the second highest price of teenage pregnancies in Latin America, based on United Nations knowledge.

“This announcement is inadequate,” mentioned Maria Elena Mendez, head of the Honduran Ladies’s Rights Middle. “Different ladies who get pregnant additionally face discrimination and can’t proceed with work and research, getting into right into a circle of marginalization and distress.”

Ladies’s and human rights teams proceed to demand the decriminalization of abortion in Honduras.

Round 50,000 to 80,000 back-street abortions happen every year in Honduras, native reproductive rights teams estimated in 2019.