President ends ban and makes emergency contraception broadly accessible : NPR

Honduran President Xiomara Castro signed a brand new govt doc Wednesday evening that may permit open entry to emergency contraception.

Workplace of the Honduran Presidency

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Workplace of the Honduran Presidency

Honduran President Xiomara Castro signed a brand new govt doc Wednesday evening that may permit open entry to emergency contraception.

Workplace of the Honduran Presidency

Ladies’s rights activists in Honduras are celebrating a significant victory, after President Xiomara Castro introduced that her authorities will carry its near-total ban on the emergency contraception tablet.

Castro introduced the reversal Wednesday night, within the last hours of Worldwide Ladies’s Day. As she undid the coverage, Castro famous that the World Well being Group says the tablet just isn’t “abortive.”

The WHO’s coverage suggestion states, “All ladies and ladies prone to an unintended being pregnant have a proper to entry emergency contraception and these strategies ought to be routinely included inside all nationwide household planning packages.”

Legalization will undo a 2009 ban

For years, Honduras was the one nation within the Americas to have an absolute ban on the sale or use of emergency contraception, also referred to as morning-after or “Plan B” drugs. It additionally prohibits abortion in all instances.

Honduras moved to ban emergency contraception in 2009, because the nation went by way of political and social upheaval. Its supreme courtroom affirmed the ban in 2012.

After Castro turned the nation’s first feminine president, Honduras eased its stance on the medication often known as PAE — for Píldora Anticonceptiva de Emergencia. However when Minister of Well being José Manuel Matheu introduced that coverage shift final fall, critics stated it did not go far sufficient, as the medication would solely be made authorized in instances of rape.

On the time, Matheu stated the tablet did not qualify as a way of contraception. However on Wednesday evening, he joined Castro at her desk to signal a brand new govt settlement along with her, opening the trail to emergency contraception.

Activists referred to as on Dangerous Bunny to assist

Teams in Honduras that pushed for open entry to emergency contraception embrace Technique Group for PAE, or GEPAE, which has been working with the U.S.-based Ladies’s Equality Middle.

When Puerto Rican rapper and pop star Dangerous Bunny toured Honduras, GEPAE used eye-catching billboards to name on the artist behind the hit “Me Porto Bonito” — which references the Plan B tablet — to induce Honduran leaders to legalize emergency contraception.

The group Centro de Derechos de Mujeres, the Middle for Ladies’s Rights, welcomed the information, saying by way of social media, “Our rights should not stay the bargaining chip of governments!”

Violence towards ladies in Honduras has lengthy been at a disaster degree. Based on the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, Honduras had the very best fee of femicide of any nation within the area in 2021, the newest yr tabulated on its web site.