Tour brings reproductive rights activists from around the world to New Brunswick [video]

Young activists from Bangladesh, the Philippines and El Salvador discussed the global movement for sexual and reproductive health and rights in Fredericton and Moncton last week as part of an tour of eastern Canada.

Other stops on the speaking tour took place in Ottawa, St. John’s, Halifax, and Montreal. The events had a special significance in New Brunswick, a province where teenage pregnancy rates are almost double the national average and access to reproductive care remains a problem.

The events, organized by the Ottawa-based group Inter Pares, came days after a provincial election dominated by the Liberals, who campaigned on a pledge to improve access to abortions. Nathalia Santos Ocasio, program manager for Inter Pares, said panel participants were “excited to be talking about this here, especially after the results of the recent elections.”

The panel took place on Friday at Resurgo Place in Moncton and on Saturday at Conserver House in Fredericton. The NB Media Co-op livestreamed the event in Moncton, and you can watch the full presentation here:

Bangladesh

Sharaban Tohura is an advocate for sexual and reproductive health and rights from Nijera Kori, a Bangladesh-based group based active on issues including the prevention of child marriage.

Speaking in Fredericton, Tohura described how in the past, she “was not so much of a feminist… but was a disobedient person.”

In her marriage, “she was treated differently from her partner as a woman,” which inspired her activism. She admitted she was terrible at “cooking, cleaning and childrearing,” provoking laughter from the audience.

Abortion hasn’t been illegal in Bangladesh since the country gained independence from Pakistan in 1971. However, there is an implementation gap in the access to services because of how social expectations affect women, Tohura said.

In childhood, women are told “they are not in their house” and will eventually move to “their husband’s house.” Women “are second-class citizens” and there are lots of improvements to be done, Tohura said.

She said the country is suffering “growing religious conservatism and patriarchal social norms.” Child marriage and teen marriages occur “at an alarming rate,” often for children “who are not aware of sexuality.”

Nijera Kori means “we need to do it ourselves,” a name signalling that women in Bangladesh “need to step up,” she said. The group “highlights the voices that are not heard and sometimes silenced in their communities” and it works in more than 10,000 villages.

“We provide tools and awareness-building, training and proper dialogue about access to justice, violence, gender equality… the growing influence of fundamentalism,” Tohura said. Those discussions, in turn, prompt discussions about issues like consent, corruption and dogmatism.

Some participants eventually become “agents” for Nijera Kori in their own communities, she said. This work is not without danger, as women face backlash. Tohura still sees hope and optimism in the “brave and powerful girls” that work in their own communities.

El Salvador

Wendy Barrera Rivas is part of La Colectiva Feminista Para el Desarollo Local from El Salvador, an organization fighting against the criminalization of sexual and reproductive rights. El Salvador’s feminist movement “is leading the resistance against the government,” according to Barrera Rivas, who is a lawyer by training. Speaking in Fredericton, she likened this work to “an extreme sport.”

El Salvador is currently under a state of emergency which limits rights of citizens, and this has resulted in the illegal detention of human rights defenders, she said.

“The country has some of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the region,” she said, “and the least access to justice for sexual violence.” Longstanding machismo, taboos, and pressure from the religious right are some of the issues faced by the organization.

Even discussing abortion is illegal in the Central American country, “one of the most repressive public policies in Latin America,” she said. Gender and diversity is a forbidden topic in the country and many healthcare clinics have been shut down, especially those for LGBTQI+ populations and survivors of sexual violence, while access to medicines for reproductive care or sexually transmitted diseases are not a government priority.

La Colectiva Feminista works in schools but has also filed litigation at the Inter-American Human Rights Court, as in the case of Manuela, an El Salvadoran woman whose tragic story resulted in a landmark ruling.

In 2008, Manuela — whose full name hasn’t been made public — went to a hospital seeking care following a miscarriage, but she was accused of having an abortion and handcuffed to her bed. She was eventually sentenced to 30 years in prison for “aggravated homicide” of the unborn fetus and died while imprisoned.

Years later, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a ruling that said El Salvador must reform its draconian policies, while affirming the need for confidentiality of patients and calling on the country to provide sex education in schools.

A second case is that of Beatriz, nicknamed “the hope of the country.” In this case, an impoverished Salvadorean woman who suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease, realized that she was pregnant for a second time.

Doctors told her that she should terminate her pregnancy because of her health and the condition of the fetus, which was anencephalic, meaning it was malformed with no prognosis to survive outside the womb.

At the time, she took her fight to El Salvador’s Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against her, while the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights called on the state to provide her with the necessary abortion treatment. However, the state did not follow through and her fetus died a few hours after Beatriz underwent an emergency C-section.

La Colectiva Feminista has now appealed to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for “undue torture… that put her life at risk” and “the violence endured because women don’t have access to bodily autonomy.”

This is the first case in which the Inter-American court will discuss the consequences of total criminalization of abortion, and its decision will set a precedent in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to one expert at Human Rights Watch. The decision is expected in December and La Colectiva is awaiting it with bated breath.

Barrera Rivas comes from an impoverished community in El Salvador and, at university, she was educated about sexual health education through la Colectiva and “in the process, learned that she was a feminist.” During her studies, she founded an organization called Chikume Siwat (meaning Seven Women) at the University in El Salvador, which she said remains active.

The Philippines

Estephanie Brigatay is a nurse clinician and clinic manager from the Likhaan Center for Women’s Health in the Philippines, one of the most populous countries in southeast Asia. She said the Philippines’ health system is decentralized, leaving decisions to local governments and resulting in “unevenly held services” in a “fragmented health system.”

The Philippines has had a “comprehensive reproductive health law” on the books since 2012, along with a “universal healthcare law” since 2019. Both were the result of a long fight, and there has also been a struggle for the implementation of those laws, Brigatay said. She said there has been an increased number of teenage pregnancies in several regions, but there has been no correlation in improved services.

The Likhaan Center for Women’s Health offers a number of services, including primary care clinics that provide contraception to teenagers without parental consent, which is illegal in the Philippines.

She noted that a major innovation following the COVID-19 pandemic is teleconsultations. Brigatay said this allows her to reach far-flung communities in the vast Philippine archipelago. Brigatay is inspired in her work by everyday events and the “realization that we need more advocates …. to push the government to make a law and implement it.”

Inter Pares

Inter Pares is currently celebrating 50 years of international activism in Canada. The group recently held a photographic exhibit titled “Daughters, mothers, grandmothers and other sexual outlaws.”

Tobin LeBlanc-Haley, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, served as moderator for the Fredericton event. The moderators in Moncton were professors Krista Johnston and Christiana MacDougall of Mount Allison University.

Local co-sponsors of the event included the NB Media Co-op, the UNB/STU University Women’s Centre, the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre, and Reproductive Justice New Brunswick.

Sophie M. Lavoie is a member of the NB Media Co-op’s editorial board.