A change to Florida’s abortion laws, which bans the termination of pregnancies after six weeks’ gestation, has limited the availability of abortions not just for residents of the US southern states, but for those in Cayman as well.
With abortion being illegal in the Cayman Islands, those seeking terminations must travel overseas or avail of black market abortion pills locally. Florida, due to its proximity to Cayman, has been the state of choice for many women in Cayman getting abortions.
It had also been the state to which many women from throughout the US south had been travelling to terminate their pregnancies, as it was the last state in the region without a near-total ban.
According to US media reports, about 10% of all abortions in Florida last year were undertaken by out-of-state residents.
The change in the law came into effect in Florida on Wednesday, 1 May, when the six-week ban replaced the previous 15-week abortion ban.
Review of local legislation
Legislatively, abortion is Cayman is covered by the Penal Code, which stipulates that it is unlawful to procure an abortion by any means, unless the life of the mother is at risk. That legislation is currently under review by the Law Reform Commission, which is expected to make recommendations on the subject later this month.
The commission published a discussion paper on the issue in December 2021.
On Thursday, 2 May, in response to queries from the Compass on the progress of the review of legislation regarding abortion, Law Reform Commission director José Griffith said the commission will be meeting on 16 May to consider its final draft report on the matter.
“If approved, the Final Report, in accordance with statutory requirements, will be submitted to the Attorney General for onward transmission to the Cabinet,” he said, in an emailed response. “Once a Final Report is submitted to the Attorney General, the Commission would have concluded its role. It is then left for the Attorney General and Cabinet to consider the recommendations and determine the next steps.”
Commission chairman Hector Robinson told the Compass that the abortion legislation issue would be “top of the agenda” at the 16 May meeting.
“We are very close to issuing our final report,” he said. “It will be based, in part, on the feedback we got.”
He noted that the commission received an array of comments, mostly from civil society, including churches, adding that there had been “some very strong views on both sides”.
Initially, the issue of abortion came before the commission when it was tasked with updating antiquated parts of the Penal Code and ensuring it was in line with the Bill of Rights.
Robinson explained that the commission members decided to deal with abortion as a separate issue, rather than include it as part of the general overhaul of the Penal Code.
“We took out abortion as a specific topic because we wanted to specifically focus on it rather than have it buried among the other discussions on the Penal Code generally, and dealt with it as a standalone paper,” he said.
Limited data
The Law Reform Commission’s discussion paper on abortion noted that while there has never been a criminal prosecution for abortion in Cayman, “this does not mean that abortion is not being procured”.
However, there is very little public data available on how many girls or women in Cayman have had an abortion, either locally or overseas.
More than a decade ago, in 2013, the Ministry of Health released the findings of an ‘Adolescent Health and Sexuality Survey’ which stated that, out of 202 female participants, 9.1% of 15-16 year olds and 8.5% of 17-19 year olds admitted to having an abortion.
The only other known survey on the subject in Cayman was carried out in 2022, by a University College of the Cayman Islands student, Estefanie Barnett, as part of a paper she was working on.
She received online responses from 252 female residents, 77 of whom said they had had an abortion. Thirty-nine of those said they had travelled overseas to have a safe abortion, 11 did it illegally in Cayman by taking medication, and the rest had been living in countries where abortion was legal at the time of their pregnancy.
The survey results also showed that 90% of the respondents said they supported the legalisation of abortion in Cayman.
Barrett told the Compass last week she had forwarded her survey findings to the Law Reform Commission, as part of its public consultation following the publication of the commission’s discussion paper on the issue in December 2021.
She said she had hoped that a roundtable discussion she had hosted in May 2022 to release the findings of her survey would spark conversation locally on the issue, but “I don’t really see it being discussed”.
During that roundtable meeting, Barnett had told attendees, “Criminalising abortion only pushes women to engage in unsafe behaviours in order to procure an abortion, sometimes with fatal consequences. … My paper argues that the restrictive abortion law does not reflect the opinions of women across the island.”
An investigation by the Cayman Compass in July 2022 revealed that, in the absence of the availability of medical abortions in Cayman, some women were turning to illegal abortion pills, which can be purchased locally for massively inflated prices – $500 a dose.
The Law Reform Commission’s discussion paper points out that Cayman is one of 39 countries in the world where abortion can only be legally carried out to save the life of a pregnant woman. In another 24 countries, abortions are banned under any circumstances.
Cayman’s Penal Code does not address the issue of abortion in cases that involve pregnancies following rape or incest.
In its paper, the commission acknowledged the subject of abortion is “highly emotive, sensitive, complex and controversial”.
It noted, “Where abortion is safe and legal, no one is forced to have one. Where abortion is illegal and unsafe, women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or suffer serious health consequences and even death. Approximately 13% of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortions – between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually.”
Florida restrictions
Prior to Florida’s new six-week abortion ban coming into effect across the state, it had been legal to get an abortions if a woman were up to 15 weeks’ pregnant.
Opponents to the change in the legislation say many women don’t even realise they are pregnant at six weeks, so the amendment basically amounts to a complete ban.
The Florida ban has exceptions for rape, incest and human trafficking up to 15 weeks of pregnancy, and also allows abortions to save a woman’s life or to prevent “substantial and irreversible” physical impairment.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the six-week ban a year ago, but its enactment was delayed while a state Supreme Court ruling was awaited. That ruling was made in April.
Voters in Florida will have a chance to address the issue in November when a proposal to enshrine abortion rights into the state’s constitution will appear on the election ballot.
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