Amidst the feminist “green wave” movement sweeping across Latin America, with countries like Argentina legalising abortion, lawmakers in Honduras have rubber-stamped a regressive change. The Honduran Congress passed an amendment which increases the number of votes required by Congress to revise article 67 and article 112 of the Constitution that forbids abortion and same-sex marriage respectively. This amendment increases the minimum required votes from the current two-thirds majority to three-quarters, making a future revision of these provisions nearly impossible, locking in and giving permanency to the existing ban on abortion and same-sex marriage.
Abortion in Honduras is already impermissible under all circumstances, including in cases of rape, fetal anomaly, and danger to the mother's life. The country's criminal code imposes prison sentences of up to six years on women who seek abortions and on health personnel who provide them. The government also prohibits the “morning after pill,” which could prevent pregnancy following rape, unprotected sex, or a failure of contraceptives.
Criminalising abortions does not discourage people from ending unintended pregnancies. It only pushes women to put their health and lives in jeopardy by ending the pregnancy in dangerous conditions, distressed, and in the dread of arrest, and without any access to apt medical treatment. Moreover, Honduras has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world. According to data from the United Nations' 2020 Human Development Reports, nearly one in every three Honduran women over the age of 15 has experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner.
The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has confirmed that under international human rights law women and girls cannot be denied access to abortion. Such denial is a form of discrimination that endangers a range of human rights like equality, dignity, life and liberty. The Honduran reform is therefore clearly in contradiction of human rights law. The Congress cited article 4(1) of the American Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life, to justify its decision to ban abortion. However, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, in the case of Artavia Murillo et al. (“in vitro fertilization”) v. Costa Rica has clarified that it does not recognize an absolute right to life prior to birth and found that an embryo cannot be understood to be a human for the purposes of article 4(1).
In addition to its restrictions on abortion, the Honduran Congress is also entrenching state-sponsored homophobia by trying to permanently block any chance of marriage for same-sex couples. Article 112 of the Constitution explicitly states that civil marriage in Honduras can only be between a man and a woman. Through amending the votes required to change this provision, the Congress is shunning the regional push towards equality. These reforms come across as a concerted effort in Honduras to make it more difficult for the country to join others like Costa Rica, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Uruguay, and lately Argentina, which are making headway towards conformity with international human rights laws on these issues.
Mario Perez, a member of the ruling party, explained that the reform will put a "constitutional lock" on any future attempts to relax the existing restrictions. Representative of the Women’s Movement for Peace, Cristina Alvarado talked about how this legislation seeks to thwart the green wave movement in Latin America by bullet-proofing the existing ban on abortion. José Miguel Vivanco, the director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division, echoed the sentiment by saying, “In other words, they’re trying to make these provisions on same-sex marriage and abortion perpetual”. Opposition MP Doris Gutiérrez explained how the articles are now set in stone as achieving the new majority of 96 votes out of 128 is almost impossible.
Both Catholic and Evangelical Churches have a major impact on the national decision-making bodies and popular opinion in Honduras, and the introduction of this reform in an election year is a way to appease these religious groups in the middle of a wave of pro-choice policy judgements in the region.
The laws in Honduras always projected a grim picture. However, this abusive reform strips away dreams of evolution and improvement by creating a constitutional shield to progressive changes. In a time where the world is finally waking up to the need for affirmative action to ensure LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, this Honduran law serves as an ugly reminder that there’s a long way to go.
Eeshan Sonak is an undergraduate student reading Law at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, Hyderabad. His areas of interest include constitutional law, human rights, and bioethics.
Sanvi Bhatia is also a law student at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, Hyderabad. She's deeply passionate about feminist rights and gender studies.