Nepal Advances As U.S. Backslides on Women's Rights

01.03.2011 By Melissa Upreti, Center for Reproductive Rights

As the U.S. Congress launches one of the most vicious attacks against women’s health in recent history, the Supreme Court of Nepal has officially issued a groundbreaking decision on women's reproductive rights that turns on its head patriarchal notions of the government’s right to interfere in women’s decisions about their bodies. The ruling unequivocally recognizes a woman’s right to abortion as a crucial component of her reproductive rights that cannot be denied by the government without violating a broad range of her human rights.

For centuries Nepal banned abortion under any circumstance – and did not explicitly permit it even to save the life of a woman. Women were routinely thrown into prison for having abortions and many more died in the process. Unsafe abortion was widespread with women desperately seeking to end their pregnancies in order to protect their health, families, and livelihoods. The law and the criminal justice system completely ignored the circumstances surrounding a woman’s pregnancy and decision to have abortion. The ban opened the door for law enforcement officials to arbitrarily classify many abortion cases as “infanticide,” or the murder of a child following birth—a crime that carried heavy criminal penalties. And the women typically targeted were poor. It wasn’t until 2002 that the King of Nepal signed into law a bill permitting abortion under broad grounds, marking the beginning of a number of dramatic steps towards guaranteeing women’s access to safe reproductive health services in the country. read more >>