Guatemala: over 21K women annually hospitalized with botched abortions

Abortion is illegal in Guatemala, unless it can be proven to authorities as necessary to save the life of a mother. That fact combined with widespread poverty, sexism, and lack of health education results in some of the most dismal women's reproductive health statistics in the hemisphere. Over 21,000 women in Guatemala each year require medical treatment for complications related to unsafe abortions, out of a total 65,000 annually attempted. And many of those women die.

Those figures are based on data gathered in 2003, and released in a new report from the Guttmacher Institute, a global health nonprofit. The report is the subject of news reports today in Guatemala. Here's my clumsy translation of an item that appeared in the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre:

The legal restriction on abortion in Guatemala doesn't stop women from seeking abortion, and the lack of access to contraception only makes the situation worse," explained Edgar Kestler, a doctor who participated in the [Guttmacher Institute] study.

Many women, most of all in rural areas, attempt to interrupt pregnancies with herbal brews or pills of various types. They seek help from comadronas (midwives/healers) or at the pharmacy. They also visit curanderos (traditional/spiritual healers) or women known ass "señoras”, who introduce foreign objects into the womb to induce abortion, for instance, metal wires. These cause hemmorage, and damage to the womb. Very few women who seek abortions try to get help from doctors, because the cost is higher.

Kestler said that many women who have problems after an abortion try to solve them in their homes, or with help from a comadrona, because they fear social retribution or because they don't have economic means to do otherwise. They arrive late to hospitals, and because of their wounds, many die or it becomes impossible for them to get pregnant again.

It's a problem that affects many women who are silenced, but the problem is known by everyone, and the authorities need to take steps to reduce it," Kestler said.

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