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Today we asked Joan Burke about how they plan to move forward with such a significant accusation against her organization:...

Joan Burke, Executive Director - BFLA
"We will not allow what was put out there regardless by who it was put out there by. We will not allow that to deter us from the work that needs to be done. We cannot continue or we should not allow certain individuals or certain values and positions to deny others who are in need and deserve certain services - we should not deny them that and I will be the first to accept that we collectively have failed along the way. The church has failed, organizations have failed and the government has failed. Never in the history of this country have we seen so many children out in the streets begging. When we look at our teenage pregnancy and some of them are in school. When we look at the numbers of teenagers who are pregnant, when we look at the sexually transmitted infection prevalence - when we look at everything that is happening particularly with our young people, we have failed somewhere and we do not want to continue to fail. We want to come an collectively respond to the situation, but going in this direction where we are putting out false accusation will not help the situation at all."

"We will continue to do the work because we cannot afford to wipe off certain populations. What we would hope for is that as partners we can come to the table and we can dispel some misinformation."

Jules Vasquez
"At a Catholic teachers' conference they were told that the BFLA had performed 3,000 abortions in a year. That is information, you refer to misinformation. Is it actually misinformation?"

Joan Burke, Executive Director - BFLA
"Of course Jules."

Jules Vasquez
"You didn't performed 3,000 abortions?"

Joan Burke, Executive Director - BFLA
"No. As an organization ( I know some people accused us of being very silent) we want to be very strategic in our response. There is absolutely no way under the sun, stars or the moon that we provided those services. What I can say and will always defend is that BFLA, we provide our services from a rights-based approach and when we talk about rights-base, we recognize a woman right to access to safe abortion services."

"The law in this land allows for a woman to access an abortion if her health is at risk, the health of the baby is at risk and if there is a situation - if a referral is made to BFLA and within the protocols that we operate under - we will provide those services. We will not deny that woman. There is no way, this is what they are probably accusing us of is killing or doing abortion more than live births which is ridiculous and so for the records and who wants to listen, can listen. Who want to believe can believe, but for the records, that is slanderous and it's a lie and if they want they can come and check our records. The good that we have done for this country and for them to feel that those little information that they are putting out there will stop us, it will not. We provide services in this country. When we look at our data for last year 2013, we provided services for over 13,000 people in this country and among those 13,000 we have provided 182,000 services and that 182,000 doesn't include the 3,000 abortions that they say that we did because it's a lie."

"In terms of the medical procedures based within the context of the law of Belize where persons were referred for various health reasons for 2013, we have done 13 medical procedures."

BFLA has peer education programmes in 8 schools, 2 of them Catholic.