DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Women Facing Increased Risk

By Elizabeth Eames Roebling
SANTO DOMINGO, Dec 2 (IPS) Dominican organisations focused on the rights
of women are bringing in assistance from all over Latin America to aid
them in their fight against Article 30 in the recently approved
constitution which states that the right to life is inviolable from
conception until death.

Ahead of the formal signing of the constitution by President Leonel
Fernandez on Dec. 6, women's rights leaders from Chile, Mexico,
Peru, Nicaragua, Brazil and Uruguay met with local leaders at an all day
forum here and related the experiences of campaigns in their respective
countries.

The Nov. 24 forum is only the first of several that will be held across
the hemisphere, including one in California in which Alice Walker will be
a keynote speaker, followed by conferences in Argentina, Brazil and
Mexico.
Margarita Zapata, of the Zapata Family Foundation in Mexico, opened the
conference, saying that this initial conference had been planned for the
Dominican Republic in order to honour the Mirabel Sisters, martyrs for
justice, for whom the International Day Against Violence to Women is
named.

Zapata said that all over the region legislators were exercising their
political power against the wishes of the majority of their population,
the women. Observing that while most statistics on gender violence reveal
that much of it is family based, the violence of the state against women
is strong and persistent.

She roused the crowd of 200 women with the statement that: "It is
unjust that so few can decide so much for the lives of so many!"

A leader of one of the local organisations, CEAPA, Margot Tapia, expressed
her fears about the effect of Article 30.
"With the passage of this amendment, the violence against women will
increase. There is already a great deal of violence against women in this
country, but now the state itself is making it worse. A woman who becomes
pregnant from rape will not only have the violence of that act itself but
will also have the violence of being forced to keep the pregnancy, which
is a violation of her rights. A recent Gallup poll here showed that the
majority of the people in the Dominican Republic wish this article
changed. The people here support abortions in the case of rape, incest or
to save the life of the mother, all prohibited now."

Those in opposition to Article 30 are careful to limit their discussion of
abortion to only those circumstances, rape, incest, and risk to a
mother's life, and not to expand their demands to any sort of
free access to abortion. Most acknowledge that abortions are readily
available in the Dominican Republic to women who have the means to pay for
them and that only the poor will be placed at further risk.

Medical authorities recognise that death from illegal abortions is one of
the main contributors to the high rate of maternal mortality here. The
Dominican Republic provides free medical assistance to Haitians who come
here and many of these pregnant women, sometimes estimated as high as one
third of the deliveries here, have often had no prenatal care and poor
nutrition. While the maternal death rate has fallen dramatically over
recent years from 230 to 160 per 100,000, the fear is that this number
will increase.

Mejia Chalas, from one of the leading women's organisations, Ce
Mujer, said: "We have not lost any funding because of our position.
No one has told us to be quiet. Both our Board of Directors and members of
our general assembly have been demonstrating in a very public manner
against this measure. We are in 11 municipalities and we have 7,000 women
who are organised as community leaders in all these communities. …
They are all in agreement that we stand united against this Article 30.
The people who passed this do not know the reality of the lives of women.
We wish them to know this reality and to listen to the voice of the
majority of the Dominican people.

The strict amendment was passed over the objections of the medical
community and even the leader of the opposition party, Miguel Vargas who
asked all of his party members, the PLD, to vote against the amendment,
saying that a vote for the amendment could turn his party into a
"party which is an enemy to women." Nevertheless, only two
members of his party were among those 34 votes cast in opposition, versus
128 for the controversial amendment.

Josefa Castillo, one of the two members of the opposition who voted
against the amendment, stated in her address to the Congress on this issue
that while she is Catholic, that church has held more than one position on
the subject over the years and that their position has no biblical basis,
and that this subject rests inside the space where each person meets with
God. According to Castillo, the state has the responsibility to protect
the lives of mother's who are at risk.

She holds out no hope that the new constitution will not be signed by
President Fernandez as scheduled on Dec. 6th.
"We always took the stand that this article should never have been
put in the constitution. Now we are facing many years of struggle to
strengthen the rights of women here in this country."