Abortion Still Illegal in Honduras

Honduran feminist groups suffered a blow on Thursday, in their bid to enact legislation to legalize abortion.

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The groups were unsuccessful in convincing lawmakers to make abortion legal in specific circumstances. Honduras is one of a handful of countries that criminalizes abortion in all circumstances. Any woman who undergoes one may be imprisoned for up to six years.

For the first time in more than 30 years, Honduran lawmakers have taken steps to overhaul the penal code. This led feminist groups and other human rights organizations to believe that the abortion ban would also be revisited.

The groups lobbied the lawmakers charged with creating the recommended list for penal code amendments to suggest relaxing the ban to allow women to seek abortions in cases of rape, incest, unviable pregnancies or for health reasons. “We saw a big opportunity here because basically every single article was changed in some way, but this one,” said Elida Caballero Cabrera, advocacy adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Caballero Cabrera added that, at one point, the lawmakers appeared to be leaning toward allowing abortion in medical emergencies. But, anti-abortion religious groups, seemingly, intervened and the commission declined to recommend that the ban be amended. “It was very frustrating,” Caballero Cabrera said. “Honduras is a very, very dangerous place for women. It’s a country that lives in extreme poverty and in constant war and lack of security. And it’s very sad to see that the decisions that are made by the government, and the people who should be promoting all this access to justice for these women, are the ones who are putting so many barriers for them.”

Between 2005 and 2013, the number of violent female deaths rose by more than 260 percent, according to a report submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur. Also, in 2013, the UN found that femicide had become the second-leading cause of death for Honduran women of reproductive age. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, sexual assault is a widespread problem with one being filed every three hours in 2013. The UN reported that, in 2014, 95 percent of sexual violence and femicide cases went uninvestigated. In a statement in April of this year, the UN said, “...we deeply regret the lack of public policies for the promotion and protection of women’s sexual and reproductive rights, particularly in terms of family planning.”

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Caballero Cabrera expressed disappointment with the government's decision to keep the abortion ban in place. “Our hope was to have at least one good [outcome],” she said, “so it could be replicating and influencing the rest.” She had hoped that the Honduran lawmakers would relax the abortion ban, which would create a ripple effect and cause other countries to follow suit.