Members of the Honduran Congress voted on Thursday to amend the structure making it a lot more durable to reverse present hard-line bans on abortion and same-sex marriage, as lawmakers double down on socially conservative priorities.
Lawmakers voted to require a three-quarters super-majority to alter a constitutional article that provides a fetus the identical authorized standing of an individual, and one other that states that civil marriage within the Central American nation can solely be between a person and a lady.
With 88 legislators in favor, 28 opposed and 7 abstentions, the proposal will nonetheless want a second vote within the unicameral legislature subsequent yr earlier than it’s enacted.
Currently, all constitutional modifications require a two-thirds majority vote of the 128-member physique.
Mario Perez, a lawmaker with the ruling get together of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, defined throughout a digital flooring debate that the change will create a “constitutional lock” on any would-be softening of the prevailing articles.
The nation’s prison code units out three to six-year jail phrases for ladies who abort a fetus in addition to anybody else concerned.
Abortion-rights proponents accused backers of the proposal of looking for to cement the present bans.
“This legislation permanently condemns pregnant women or pregnant girls who have been raped or risk dying due to health reasons,” mentioned Merary Mendoza, a researcher with the Honduran ladies’s research middle CEMH.
Kevihn Ramos, the top of a homosexual rights advocacy group in Honduras, blasted the lawmakers who voted to make it more durable to alter the 2 constitutional articles.
“This reform is the product of a state-imposed religion on Honduras,” he mentioned.
