The US isn’t the only country with ignorant misogynists who hate women’s rights…
Women on Waves is an organization that tries to help women in the early stages of pregnancy who have difficulty accessing abortion. In Guatemala, abortion is only legal if the mother’s life is in danger.
The Guatemalan military said on Thursday that it had sent one its vessels to intercept a Dutch “abortion ship” in international waters just off the country’s coast. The rights group Women on Waves, which hopes to help Guatemalans circumvent their government’s ban on terminating pregnancy, complained that their boat was being illegally detained.
“The military will not permit this group to carry out its activities in the country,” read an official complaint from the army penned at the behest of President Jimmy Morales.
Women on Waves fired back, saying that Guatemala’s navy was “obstructing a lawful protest against the state’s restrictions on the Guatemalan women’s right to safe abortion.”
They also stressed the need for abortion for health reasons, including the spread of the Zika virus, which can have devastating effects on infants: “Especially at the dawn of the Zika crisis, access to safe abortion is fundamentally an issue of social justice.”
The group said that around 65,000 women in Central America have illegal and unsafe abortions each year. Read on. Photo Reuters/L. Echeverria
