On International Women’s Day, Wednesday 8 March, the government of Honduras lifted the ban on assault rifles in the country. The painkiller has been banned in Honduras since 2009 – until now. Honduras has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, and therefore the abolition of the ban on the abortion pill is a huge victory, say activists in the Central American country. One of them is Sandy Arteaga. She is an activist in Honduras, where she fights for women’s rights to contraception and abortion, among other things. In 2022, she was named by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential women in the world. – It is a victory after 14 years of prohibition – we could hardly believe it. We are extremely excited that women finally have the opportunity to terminate pregnancies before they occur. We have many teenage pregnancies, rapes and violence in the country every single day, so this victory here is huge, she says. Not an abortion pill Activist Sandy Arteaga says that there is a widespread belief in the country that the birth control pill is a form of abortion. This is despite the fact that the World Health Organisation, WHO, describes the pill as a contraceptive, and not a pill that ends pregnancies. This is precisely why the campaign “Hablemos lo que es” – loosely translated as “let’s talk about what it is” – has been creating information campaigns in Honduras since 2019 that the attack tool is emergency contraception and not a form of abortion. Sandy Arteaga is spokesperson for the campaign. – We have worked a lot to reach out to older people, teenagers, health workers, teachers and everyone else who has used it to gain knowledge about it, she says. – My country is both very religious and conservative, so it is extremely difficult to talk about this here when the population has a wrong understanding of what the attack is. It can be very exhausting, but it’s a conversation we have to have. Risk prison for abortion Abortion is illegal in Honduras under all circumstances, even if the pregnant woman has been subjected to rape or incest, if the mother’s life is in danger, or if the fetus cannot live outside the womb. According to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, you can risk imprisonment for up to six years in Honduras if you have an abortion performed or help to perform it. As recently as 2021, the Honduran government added the abortion ban to the country’s constitution, making it more difficult than ever to change abortion laws in the future. At the same time, the number of members of Congress necessary to amend the law was raised from two-thirds of Congress to three-quarters. This means that 96 out of a total of 128 members of Congress must vote for the law to be changed. Among other things, it has been met with criticism from the UN. Even though abortions are banned, they still take place – they’re just illegal and more unsafe. A group of UN experts has estimated that between 51,000 and 82,000 unsafe abortions take place in Honduras each year, but it is difficult to know for sure, because many women do not seek medical attention if something goes wrong. At the same time, the number of teenage births in the country is high – also higher than the average in the other Latin American countries. According to the UN, every fourth girl in Honduras has been pregnant at least once before she turns 19. Honduras’ first female president It was Honduras’ first female president, Xiomara Castro, who signed the decision to abolish the ban on the assault rifle. She has been in power since January 2022, and she ran for election, among other things, to relax the strict abortion legislation and generally promote women’s conditions in the country. – What the president did was both historic and symbolic. We have never before had a president who has made such a big decision to support women’s rights – perhaps beyond giving women the right to vote, says Honduran activist Sandy Arteaga. But even if women in Honduras can now legally use the pill, there is still a long way to go. – We still have a lot of work to do. There are still no pharmacies that sell the attack pill. There is an implementation process before the attack tool becomes available. There are also pharmacies that say they will not sell the “abortion pill”. We are following the development closely and hope that it will be available to everyone soon, she says. Also, Sandy Arteaga believes that many older women will avoid using the contraceptive pill even when it becomes available, because they still associate it with abortion, just as she fears that emergency contraception will be more difficult to obtain in the countryside than in the cities. Therefore, Sandy Arteaga believes that it is important to continue the fight for more rights for women in Honduras. – We cannot lose hope in the fight for our rights. I see something really beautiful growing within the feminist movement, more and more women are becoming part of it and it’s really powerful. It gives me even more hope, she says.
ttn-70
A victory for women: Honduras lifts ban on assault rifle
