Nicaragua's Abortion Law Threatens Lives

Latin America has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. If anti-choice U.S. Senators like Sam Brownback from Oklahoma had their way, we wouldn't be far behind.

Rosa Argentina Rodríguez Bojorge (center rear) is caring for her grandson Lester Antonio Telles Bojorge, 3, whose mother died from pregnancy complications this month. The family believes doctors delayed treatment because of an anti-abortion law. (Dermot Tatlow for the Boston Globe)

Doctors and women's groups are warning that Nicaragua's ban on all abortions -- even to save the mother -- will endanger the lives of thousands of women every year.

With the new law, which imposes prison sentences of up to eight years for women and doctors , Nicaragua joins El Salvador and Chile as having the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Latin America and among the toughest in the world.

In El Salvador, women who develop ectopic pregnancies -- when a fertilized egg gets stuck in a fallopian tube, giving it no chance of survival -- are kept under guard in a hospital. A prosecutor must certify that the embryo has died or the woman's tube has ruptured before doctors can intervene.