Is Ecuador's Correa blurring the lines between religion and politics?
When President Rafael Correa learned Pope Francis would visit Ecuador this summer he tweeted, “My joy is immense!”
President Correa has long identified as a leftist and a humanist, but during his seven years in office his Catholic faith has increasingly come to influence his policies on education, reproductive health, and poverty reduction.
Late last year, President Correa appointed a pro-life head to a national family planning program who favors an abstinence-only approach. Meanwhile, he aggressively stifled proposals to amend abortion laws to allow for it in cases of rape. Taken together, these moves signal a conservative shift that some observers say could undermine Ecuador's progress on maternal health, particularly among teen, indigenous, and poor families.
“This isn’t a debate about morals, but about not having access to information, to methods of contraception and abortion,” says Virginia Gómez de la Torre, a physician and reproductive rights activist in Quito. “But the moral and religious voices are louder and more influential than we are.”
http://news.yahoo.com/ecuadors-correa-blurring-lines-between-religion-politics-144812391.html
