UDP Women Warn Against Contraceptive Rollbacks

The national conversation around prescription drugs, and who gets access to them, is growing louder, and women’s advocates are stepping firmly into that debate. Speaking at today’s UDP press conference, Ann Marie Williams, Chair of the party’s National Organization for Women, raised concerns about access to birth control, warning that any effort to restrict contraceptives would roll back hard won progress for women. Williams says the issue goes beyond medication, calling it a matter of women’s health, autonomy, and reproductive rights in Belize.

 

Anne Marie Williams, Chair, UDP NOW

“Today is earth day and women, fifty percent of this population, and also globally, fifty percent of this population, we are a part of this earth and out bodies are not separate from nature’s logic. To deny us access to contraceptives, to deny is the tools to support sexual and reproductive health and rights is to tell the earth that is must grow with season, choice and rights. So today we must say plainly that a government that claims to honor life, must first honor the woman create it. For more than fifty years, let this sink in, for more than fifty years could have safely and responsibly access birth control over the counter in Belize. This longstanding practice has enabled women to excess autonomy over their own body, and of course their sexual reproduction health and rights. To reverse this access now is not only regressive, it is profoundly out of step with the lived realities of all Belizean women.”

 

Williams argued that Belize is behind other Caribbean countries like Barbados and Trinidad that are progressive in their women’s reproductive health policies and access to contraceptives.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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