Managua, Nicaragua, Feb 15, 2007 / 09:51 am

Pro-life doctors and leaders in Nicaragua have strongly denounced the lack of scientific basis and the clear pro-abortion slant of a supposed “technical report” that the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has published in response to the outlawing of therapeutic abortion in Nicaragua.
 
In noting the incongruencies of the “report,” pro-life leaders explained that those who prepared it “confuse the medical circumstances for so-called therapeutic abortion with miscarriage,” as both situations are not the same.  They said the report dealt with “estimates rather than statistics.  It’s an extrapolation of some percentages of causes of miscarriages to the number of pregnancies in Nicaragua.”

In order to back up their statement, pro-life leaders noted that on page 13 it clearly states that the report contains “estimates” and not “statistics that describe the social reality of Nicaragua.”
 
In addition, some sections of the report show that 77% of the abortions referred to are nothing more than miscarriages and not therapeutic abortions, as the PAHO attempts to erroneously and tendentiously claim.”

In speaking about the supposed negative impact of the norm that outlaws therapeutic abortion in the Central American country, the PAHO report engages in “mere suppositions about would happen and none of them establish statistically anything of much social impact,” pro-life leaders stressed.

Likewise, some “experts” of the PAHO suppose that clandestine abortions will increase and the cost of hospital care will go up” although they do not offer any specific data in the report.

These same “experts” falsely claim “that this norm has begun to have an impact on the quality of care, resulting in delayed care for obstetric complications” and “contributing to the increase in critical delays for care.”

“This document is not serious,” pro-life leaders argued, and it is not “a measure of the impact.  There are no numbers for the three months since the norm was adopted.  The PHO simply wants to “surprise the public.”

“To always opt for abortion when faced with a complication is a sign of ignorance or mediocrity in current gynecological practice,” they added.  “This document identifies obstetric complications that would necessitate an abortion.  What a health care professional would do is confront the complications in order to save both patients,” pro-life leaders stressed.