To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Forced abortion in Cuba. How Communist Cuba tramples on the sexual and reproductive rights of women prisoners
Lisdany Rodríguez was arrested on July 17, 2021 for participating in the 11J protests, and is now being denied food and medical care in reprisal for not undergoing a forced abortion. | Barbara Isaac
In Romania, the communist regime decided that increased fertility was the key to economic growth and outlawed birth control, abortion, and began policing women to “encourage” them to have more babies with the passage of Decree 770 in 1966. The last communist leader of Romania, Nicolae Ceauşescu, announced, “The fetus is the property of the entire society … Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.” Women had a duty to get pregnant for the state. The experience in Romania was one of the historic examples that inspired Margaret Atwood to write The Hand Maid’s Tale.
Castro and Ceauşescu during 1972 Romania visit (Romanian National History Museum)
Communist regimes in practice have one common feature, a complete disregard for the rights and dignity of the individual. Cuba under the Castro brothers went in the opposite direction from their comrades in Romania. Abortion was encouraged, and even mandated for the purpose of improving health statistics by terminating difficult pregnancies without the consent of the mother, and it now appears to also punish pregnant jailed dissidents.
The Cuban state perpetrates many forms of violence against women. Use of coerced abortion to optimize infant mortality rate in Cuba. Now, a threat of forced abortion against political prisoner Lisdany Rodríguez Isaac. Forced abortion is a violation of human rights, but not a crime internationally. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is looking to rule forced abortion as a war crime and as torture (in Nigeria) which could then be applied to other countries.
The Cuban state announced its intention to force Lisdany Rodríguez Isaac, a Cuban political prisoner from the July 11, 2021 protests (11J), to undergo an abortion. Lisdany is seven weeks pregnant, and, as her mother recently informed Prisoners Defenders, an non-governmental organization based in Spain, the young woman fears for her life and according to Libertad Digital on January 28, 2024 she is being denied access to proper nutrition and medical attention as punishment for not undergoing an abortion.
In addition to "gender violence" by the Cuban state, these abuses also constitute "obstetric violence." Five independent Cuban journalists spent over a year studying how obstetric violence occurs in the country and why Cuban authorities do not consider it a problem.
Why would the Cuban state consider this a problem when it is the state itself - the owner and master of public health on the island - that practices this kind of violence? The five journalists conducted a survey among 500 women who shared details of their childbirth experiences and interviewed experts, feminist activists, and healthcare professionals.
The result of this investigative effort is the website partoscuba.info, a project by Isabel Echemendía, Claudia Padrón, Darcy Borrero, and two other journalists residing in Cuba who requested anonymity for security reasons. In May 2023, the Partos Rotos page was blocked by ETECSA, the sole internet provider in Cuba.
The state exercises gender violence every day, especially against independent journalists, opposition activists, dissident artists, and human rights defenders. The methodology includes arbitrary detentions or threats of detention; beatings; acts of repudiation by mobs; arbitrary arrests; deportations, including domestic deportations; hours or days of incommunicado detention; police harassment; home surveillance; confiscation of work equipment and cell phones; banning women from leaving their homes, which amounts to house arrest; threats to mothers of losing custody of their children, and family separations.
For decades, infant mortality statistics in Cuba have been optimized thanks to abortions performed in cases of high-risk pregnancies. It is worth remembering that abortion was partially legalized in Cuba in 1936, limited to three conditions: a mother’s life at risk, fetal conditions, and rape or incest (Stoner, Lynn. From the House to the Street: The Cuban Women's Movement in Favor of Legal Reform (1898-1940). Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2003). Fidel Castro's government approved unrestricted abortion in 1969. Now, the regime has added forced abortion - or abortion without consent - also labeled obstetric violence, to its list of possible horrors.
Forced abortion is a form of reproductive coercion: the act of forcing a woman to terminate a pregnancy against her will. Forced abortions associated with the one-child policy occurred in the People's Republic of China between 1980 and 2015. In September 1997, a bill titled the "Forced Abortion Accountability Act" was introduced in the United States, seeking to sanction "those officials of the Chinese Communist Party, the government of the People's Republic of China, and other persons involved in the practice of forced abortions..." (Forced Abortions, Wikipedia). Forced abortion, and the removal of wombs to sterilize women as a systematic practice today in China today against Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in China.
Forced abortions have been a form of punishment in prisons in other communist countries. North Korea banned pregnancy in its prisons in the 1980s. Many North Korean defectors claim that forced abortions were common in Chinese prisons. Most detainees in those prisons were women. Repatriated North Korean women were subjected to forced abortions regardless of their alleged crimes (BBC News Seoul. Laura Bicker, "Beatings and forced abortions: Life in a North Korea prison. 03/27/2022).
The United Nations considers forced abortion a violation of human rights for it disregards women's reproductive and control rights, free from coercion, discrimination, or violence (CEDAW). However, since there is no legal concept of forced abortion at the international level, not even in the International Criminal Court (ICC), it is almost impossible to bring this abuse to trial. [Since 2020, a case has been under debate in the ICC against Nigeria under the category of war crimes against humanity, which is still unresolved (Justsecurity.org 12/23/2022).
When it comes to women's well-being, Cuba is in the worst possible company: that of Communist China and North Korea. Perhaps in the future, a law might be adopted criminalizing forced abortions that could be applied to Cuba. It would be a way to protect political prisoners –and women everywhere- from the gender violence exercised by the state. For now, we must remain vigilant against the regime's threat against Lisdany Rodríguez Isaac. In the context of state machismo, no woman is safe from abuse, especially in prison.
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