The President of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, assured on Monday that his government is working on a bill to approve the organization of a referendum, so that the Dominicans are the ones who decide on the decriminalization of abortion, an issue that “divides the population” of the country.
“I am in favor of it, but it is a decision that involves many issues, not only health, but also religious,” said the Dominican president in an interview Monday in Madrid with the president of the EFE Agency, Gabriela Cañas.
Abinader is on an official visit to Spain before traveling to Andorra, where the mixed Ibero-American Summit due to the coronavirus pandemic will take place next Wednesday.
Prior to that trip, she participated in a forum organized by EFE and the Casa de América, where she reiterated her support for the decriminalization of abortion in her country, a controversial issue for years in the Dominican Republic and one of its strongholds. during the campaign.elections that led him to the presidency.
The Dominican Republic is one of six countries in America that maintain a total ban on abortion, along with El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and Suriname.
However, organizations have reported that thousands of abortions are performed clandestinely each year in the Caribbean country, which puts women’s lives at risk.
Various sectors are calling on the National Congress to include abortion in the Criminal Code when a woman’s life or health is in danger, when the fetus is incompatible with extrauterine life, and when pregnancy is the product of rape.
However, other sectors suggest excluding the issue from the Criminal Code and including it in a special law, while a third group considers that it should be put to a referendum.
For now, the decision is in the hands of the Dominican Congress and the possibility of organizing that referendum.
Abinader acknowledged the country’s high maternal mortality rate, but said one of the causes was related to the “Haitian problem” and “the sense of humanity with which we treated it.”
In this regard, he recalled that 29% of maternity beds in the Dominican Republic are occupied by Haitian women, due to the absence of hospitals in Haiti.
“48% of maternal mortality in the Dominican Republic corresponds to Haitians, also because they did not have access to prior medical consultations,” he stressed.
The Dominican president explained that this is an issue they discussed with his Haitian counterpart, Jovenel Moïse, and it was decided to build border hospitals on the Haitian side “so that they can be treated there and so that they can we unload our own “.