Image Credit: XiomaraCastroZ/Twitter

Tegucigalpa, March 14 (RHC)-- In Honduras, President Xiomara Castro has legalized the use of emergency contraceptive medication, overturning a ban that was over a decade old.  Her executive order was issued on International Women’s Day last week. 

The morning-after pill was prohibited following the 2009 U.S.-backed military coup that put a right-wing, authoritarian government in power. 

Abortion is still illegal in Honduras, including in cases of rape, carrying a sentence of up to six years in prison for the people who undergo the procedure, as well as those who provide it.

In related news, a group of U.S. lawmakers in South Carolina’s state House have proposed legislation to make getting an abortion punishable by the death penalty.  The measure would amend the state’s code of laws to grant zygotes, or fertilized eggs, “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state.” The bill has gathered the support of nearly two dozen South Carolina House Republicans who now co-sponsor it. 

Meanwhile, in Texas, a man has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against three women he accuses of “illegally” assisting his ex-wife in having a medication abortion.  Texas’s abortion ban allows private citizens to file civil suits against abortion providers or anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks.