With the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, calling for abortions to be classified as crimes under the Penal Code, and the director of the Caribbean’s largest maternity hospital, el Hospital de Maternidad Nuestra Senora de la Altagracia, asking that abortion not be legalized, the issue is once again on the forefront of public opinion. According to El Caribe, there are 300 abortions a month are performed at the maternity hospital in Santo Domingo, the nation’s largest health care facility for pregnant women. Dr. Juan Cid, the hospital’s director, said that if abortions were legalized, there would be thousand upon thousands of abortions by women that simply did not want their pregnancies to come to fruition.
And, at the hospital, even their statistics are not all that clear. Young women seldom admit provoking an abortion and usually say that “they fell,” thus producing the loss of the fetus.
A pastoral letter from the Dominican Council of Bishops is asking the Congress to modify articles 225, 226,227 and 228 of the Penal Code. The bishops said that “we Dominicans should never vote for a legislator that does not defend life and that promotes the culture of death.” The letter also wants to change the name of the crime from “Illegal Interruption of a Pregnancy” to “the Crime of Abortion.” Some NGOs are requesting that abortions be permitted under special circumstances.
An estimated 85,000 abortions are carried out in the DR a year.