NICARAGUA: Nicaraguan Feminists Protest For Their Bodies, Autonomy, Lives

The news of the day was that Democratic representatives walked out of a hearing on “religious liberty and birth control.” Republicans had blocked the testimony of a woman who wanted to speak in favor of the Obama administration's compromise on birth control. But the Republicans allowed representatives, men, from conservative religious organizations to testify. House Representative Carolyn Maloney remarked, “What I want to know is, where are the women?”

A picture tweeted by Planned Parenthood illustrates this question completely.

Where are the women? In Nicaragua, some women are in the streets.

Yesterday, at the International Poetry Festival in Granada, there was a parade, with dancing and singing and cheers.

There was also a protest by Nicaraguan women. Nicaraguan feminists.

On the parade route, a group of Nicaraguan women, wearing signs that read “Fui violada y ahora estoy embarazada. ¿Te parece justo?” (“I was raped and now I am pregnant. Does that seem just?) lay down in the middle of the parade, stopping the flow of the marching. They passed out flowers in protest of the ban against therapeutic abortion in the country.

Therapeutic abortion—an abortion performed to save the life of a pregnant woman—had been constitutional in Nicaragua up until October 2006. When Sandinista politician Daniel Ortega re-assumed the presidency, he kept the law intact, a complete reversal from his stance before his re-election. Women's groups have been pressuring the State to repeal the ban, but Ortega's switch came with the support of an important Catholic bishop. Within a year of the law's passing, 82 women had died due to lack to life-saving abortion procedures.

The State passes regulations preventing women from accessing health care that would save their lives. Then the State uses religious institutions to embolden its position. Sound familiar?

Violence against women more than often flows from patriarchal institutions trying to police their bodies and autonomy. It happens globally, outside the United States, and inside the country just as easily.

Women are defending their equality all over the world, in the State and in the streets. That is where they will be until the job is done.