Honduras urged to put an end to birth control myths

Campaigners move to end misconceptions about emergency contraception in country where morning-after pill is outlawed

Nina Lakhani
Wed 24 Apr 2019 09.00 BST Last modified on Wed 24 Apr 2019 15.48 BST

A pioneering grassroots campaign to legalise emergency contraception is launched in Honduras this week amid ongoing false claims by church leaders, senior doctors and conservative politicians that the medication causes abortions, infertility and cancer.

Honduras is the only country in Latin America where emergency contraception is banned, forcing desperate women, including rape victims, to buy expensive and unregulated contraband pills on the black market.

Emergency contraception was outlawed in 2009 just weeks after a coup d’etat backed by a powerful network of religious, economic and military elites ousted the democratically elected president. Since then, the church has played a significant role in the country’s politics.

At the time, senior Catholic and evangelical clergy publicly denounced emergency contraception as an “abortion pill”.

This falsehood was repeated by the de facto government’s health minister – a medical doctor and former president of the College of Medicine – before he authorised the ban.

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