page_title: Human rights in the Dominican Republic
section_title: Reproductive rights
hierarchical_section_title: Human rights in the Dominican Republic / Treatment of particular groups and minorities / Women / Reproductive rights
caption_attribution_description: For more info on Feed My Starving Children, please visit: &lt;a href="http://www.fmsc.org" rel="nofollow"&gt;www.fmsc.org&lt;/a&gt;
context_page_description: Human rights in the Dominican Republic constitute the civil and political rights and freedoms legally protected under the Constitution of the Dominican Republic and enforced by the government through common and statutory law. The majority of human rights disputes are presided over by the highest court of constitutional appeal, the Dominican Constitutional Tribunal. These rights and freedoms have developed over time in accordance with the Dominican Republic's expansion from the former Spanish colony of the Captaincy General of Santo Domingo to its modern state formation. The history of human rights in the state have also been marked by the oscillation between democratic administrations, such as the current presidency of Danilo Medina, and authoritarian administrations, most significantly the dictatorial regime of Rafael Trujillo between 16 August 1930 and 16 August 1938.
context_section_description: As of 2019, abortion remains a criminal offence in the Dominican Republic, according to article 37 of the current constitution which enshrines the right to life “from conception to death”. As a result, providers of abortions and women seeking them face criminal sanctions regardless of the health or financial implications to the mother or the circumstances of the impregnation. The Minister of Public Health recognised that unsafe abortions and complications during pregnancy and delivery are major contributors to the maternal mortality rate, and an NGO Women's Link Worldwide reported a rate of one pregnancy-related mortality every two days during the first half of 2017, placing the blame on the dearth of adequate health services.
  In December 2014, President Danilo Medina promoted a series of sweeping reforms to the Dominican Republic's penal code, with his contentious proposal to decriminalize abortion in instances of rape, incest and threat to the life of the mother receiving a significant amount of local and international media attention. However, a Constitutional Court decision the following year ruled the reform unconstitutional and reinstituted the total ban on abortions. The decision was widely criticised as a major blow to the progression of women's rights in the country, its impact described by Amnesty International as “catastrophic for women and girls…who will continue to be criminalized, stigmatized and forced to seek out unsafe abortions because they are denied access to safe and legal medical treatment”. Several United Nations committees including the UN Committee against Torture have condemned the decision, accusing the administration of infringing basic rights to life and health and inflicting physical and mental suffering tantamount to torture by denying access to the services.
  The treatment of women in the Dominican Republic received further scorn from the international community in August 2017, when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights received a petition demanding justice for the death of Rosaura Almonte Hernández in 2012. Hernandez, a sixteen year old with leukaemia popularly known as “Esperancita”, was refused access to a therapeutic abortion contrary to numerous medical recommendations and died several days after being denied leukaemia treatment over concerns for the foetus.
caption: A Dominican mother and son working with Feed My Starving Children, an international nonprofit organisation
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