Maternal and reproductive health is high on the international development agenda as critical to address in order to improve the rates of maternal mortality and morbidity in many developing countries. Maternal health and reproductive rights are intertwined, especially women’s rights to control their fertility and to choose when to become pregnant. But reproductive rights are very contentious in many countries in Latin America, in particular access to contraception and the termination of pregnancies.
In this Briefing Paper, which we launched at an event at Amnesty on 24 September 2015 for the 28 September Day of Action, the Central American Women’s Network in London provides an overview of the situation in the Latin American region with a focus on the situation of women in El Salvador who have been criminalised because they had obstetric complications in pregnancy or attempted to terminate their pregnancies.
Full text of the report can be found at: http://issuu.com/cawn/docs/reproductive_rights_sept15__1_