Representatives of the Dominican state ratified on Wednesday, 30 January 2019, during a United Nations human rights meeting in Geneva the commitment of the Medina administration to continue working for the legislative approval for an amendment to the Penal Code to decriminalize abortion in three cases.
The Dominican Penal Code, sanctioned by the National Congress in 2014, has been vetoed twice by the President Danilo Medina, because it maintains the penalty of abortion in all cases, even when pregnancy poses a risk to the mother’s life, if the fetus is not viable or is the pregnancy is the result of a rape.
In order to resolve the impasse in Congress amongst those that favor the religious point of view of zero flexibility for abortion and the Medina administration position proposed in April 2018 that the abortion article be excluded from the Penal Code that is in review.
During her participation in the presentation of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) to the UN, Women Minister Janet Camilo also referred to problems of teenage pregnancy, and reiterated the responsibility of the country in implementing a policy of sexual education and reproductive system that prevents them, according to a Ministry of Women press release.
In that sense, the official informed that, under the coordination of the Vice Presidency of the Dominican Republic, in February a new National Plan for the Reduction of Pregnancy in Adolescents (PERA-RD) will be presented for the period 2019-2023 and its operational plan 2019-2020.
In September 2018, the United Nations urged the Dominican Republic to strengthen measures to reduce teenage pregnancy. Statistics indicate that 22% of women 12 to 19 years has been pregnant.
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MetroRD
4 February 2019
