The Bahamas government disclosed information on possible state-sanctioned abortions in a report last month to the international committee of the United Nations governing discrimination against women.
Although abortion is currently illegal in the Bahamas, the government revealed that it is aware of cases where licensed physicians perform abortions in private and public hospitals for justifiable reasons, such as “foetal deformity and rape or incest, as well as on health grounds”.
Such abortions are made possible because “the law is interpreted very liberally,” according to a report submitted to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
The CEDAW committee expressed concern about the legal provisions for protecting women and called on the government to “broaden the conditions under which abortion can be legally available, including in instances of rape and incest.”
Read the complete article by Noelle Nicolls in The Tribune
