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LATIN AMERICA: Abortion - Still Illegal,
Still Killing, Despite Growing Awareness
By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS (IPS) - Although most of
the governments in Latin America today
are described as progressive, abortion
is only legal in one country, while in
five countries it is banned under all
circumstances, even when the mother's
life is at risk.
But draconian laws against abortion that
allow very few, or no, exceptions have
failed to prevent the average abortion
rate in the region from reaching 31 per
1,000 women, two more than the global
average, and higher than any other
region.
Such laws have simply forced the
practice underground, making unsafe
abortions the second leading cause of
maternal mortality in the region.
"Machismo plays a key role. Our
societies are so patriarchal that it
just isn't that difficult to deny that
right," Uruguayan sociologist Moriana
Hernández told IPS. "If there was social
awareness about equality, it would be
much more costly for progressive
governments to deny rights linked to
gender equality.
"It's easy to negotiate over the bodies
of women because of that patriarchal
influence," said Hernández, who heads
CLADEM's (Latin American and Caribbean
Committee for the Defence of Women)
campaign for non-sexist and
non-discriminatory education.
So abortion has become a bargaining chip
between government leaders and
conservative sectors, even though
everyone knows that abortions are
commonly practiced in the region.
There are more than four million illegal
abortions a year in the region, linked
to over 4,000 avoidable deaths. And in
some countries, like Argentina, there
are nearly as many abortions as births.
In the view of Hernández and other
analysts, setbacks to or the lack of
progress with respect to women's right
to choice are the result of a
fundamentalist offensive by the Catholic
Church to keep Latin America a land free
of abortions - legal ones, at least.
"The Church has always been on the watch
against abortion, but now it has become
an issue that irritates it beyond all
measure - and not only abortion but also
sex education, when actually there are
no new, or radical, proposals being set
forth," said Hernández.
Over the last decade, Latin America has
shifted to the left. At the start of
2010, there were 11 countries with
governments seen as progressive:
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba,
Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela; five
with administrations considered
rightwing or centre-right: Colombia,
Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Panama and
Peru; and two with centrist governments:
Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
But at the same time, a total ban on
abortion, even in cases of rape or a
threat to the mother's life, was adopted
in Nicaragua in 2006; in Uruguay a
presidential veto overruled the
legalisation of abortion in 2008; and in
the Dominican Republic, the right to
life from the moment of conception was
enshrined in the constitution in 2009.
In fact, the best news on the right to
choice came from two countries governed
by the right: in Colombia, the
Constitutional Court legalised
"therapeutic" abortion in cases of rape,
incest, fetal malformation or for the
life of the mother in 2006, and in
Mexico, first trimester abortion on
demand was legalised a year later in the
capital city - albeit by the leftwing
Party of the Democratic Revolution's (PRD)
majority in the local assembly
However, the five Constitutional Court
magistrates who voted in favour of the
verdict in Colombia were immediately
excommunicated by the Church.
And the law making abortion legal in
Mexico City triggered a "furious
backlash" by the Church, which has
prompted 17 of Mexico's 32 states to
adopt even stricter anti-abortion laws,
said Hernández.
Argentine anthropologist Rita Segato, a
researcher at the University of
Brasilia, attributes the Church's fervor
to reasons other than the defence of
life. "If it really cared, the Catholic
hierarchy would be fighting on other
fronts with the same vehemence,
defending life," she argued.
"Its concern at this point is to mark
the permanence of its influence" over
states in the region, and thus it is
caught up in a kind of competition for
authority with the feminist movement in
Latin America, she said in an interview.
"I'm still the boss here and I make sure
that my ideological profile is reflected
in the laws, and I am going to win," is
the message from the Church leadership,
according to the anthropologist.
The renewed push for even tighter
restrictions on abortion "is a war of
influences," she said.
In Segato's opinion, because the laws
criminalising abortion have a purpose
other than the stated one, they end up
being ineffective in their supposed aim.
"Catholics, non-Catholics, evangelicals
- women from all these groups are having
abortions every day, because they don't
feel it is a criminal or ethical
offence," she said.
Hernández said the Church is especially
nervous because of the growing and
increasingly visible awareness in the
region on the importance of the right to
choice, "which was unthinkable 10 or
even five years ago.
"It has always been a key aim on the
feminist agenda, but for years a popular
movement aware of its importance was
lacking. It was a neglected issue," she
said.
The activist sees the negotiation over
women's bodies in the criminalisation of
abortion as linked to the problem of
gender violence in the region, which is
"huge" despite the fact that the
Americas has the only continent-wide
treaty on violence against women (the
Inter-American Convention on the
Prevention, Punishment and Eradication
of Violence Against Women) and that
every country has laws, in some cases
even highly advanced, to fight domestic
violence.
"A society that accepts men's violence
against women cannot be asked to oppose
a woman's being blocked from deciding on
her pregnancy, another issue involving
her body," the veteran feminist activist
reflected.
The fury with which that violence has
been expressed and the renewed offensive
against any steps towards making
abortion legal have picked up as
challenges to "patriarchal power" gather
strength, said Hernández.
For that reason, it is important to take
a deeper look, "because there haven't
only been setbacks.
"There are ups and downs, as shown by
the case of Mexico, and there is a risk
of oversimplification if we only measure
progress by what governments do, without
looking deeper, at political and social
developments and the action of different
movements and interest groups," she
said.
"We have never before seen such a broad
debate on the right to abortion, and it
is growing day by day," said Hernández.
She added that one result of thise is
the combativeness shown by women in the
region on the Day for the
Decriminalisation of Abortion in Latin
America and the Caribbean, celebrated
every Sept. 28 since 1990.
Hernández cited Uruguay as an example of
the complex nuances of the issue. In
November 2008, socialist Tabaré Vázquez
of the leftwing Broad Front coalition,
whose five year term as president ended
Mar. 1, vetoed the legalisation of
abortion, one aspect of a broader law on
reproductive health, which had been
approved thanks to his own ruling
coalition's majority in Congress.
But a focus only on the veto itself
ignores other important elements, like
the facts that a majority of senators
and deputies approved the
decriminalisation of abortion; at least
63 percent of Uruguayans are in favour
of legalisation, according to opinion
polls; and the country's trade unions,
traditionally a very male-dominated
area, staunchly supported the law.
There were practical advances as well:
the final version of the law maintained
the requirement that doctors and health
centres must provide information on safe
methods to terminate a pregnancy, even
if they cannot themselves practice or
offer them; and any woman with
abortion-related complications must be
given medical treatment without
questions and without being reported to
the authorities.
When progressive presidents like
Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
Argentina's Cristina Fernández,
Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega or Ecuador's
Rafael Correa seek to ingratiate
themselves with the Church and other
conservative groups by taking a hard
line stance on abortion, they generate
contradictions with their own political
and social support bases that will
become unmanageable for themselves or
their successors in the long run, said
Hernández.
"Latin American societies are ripe for
the decriminalisation of abortion. That
is an unquestionable fact," she stated.
However, it is an issue "on which no one
is going to budge without being forced
to do so, and this also depends on
creating a critical mass of men in
favour of women's right to decide."
What the laws say
Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua
and the Dominican Republic ban abortions
under any circumstances, with no
explicit legal exceptions, even in the
case of a risk to the mother's life.
But in Honduras, although the penal code
provides for no exceptions, the Code of
Medical Ethics allows termination of a
pregnancy if the woman's life is in
danger.
Cuba is the only country in the region
where abortion on demand up to the 12th
week of pregnancy is legal, as it has
been since 1965. And the abortion rate
is less than 21 per 1,000 women of
reproductive age, 10 points lower than
the regional average.
In Argentina, Costa Rica, Paraguay and
Venezuela, abortion is allowed to save
the pregnant woman's life. Argentina
also makes an exception in the case of
women with mental disabilities, while in
Venezuela, women who undergo abortions
to preserve their honour or that of a
spouse or other relative are subject to
more lenient penalties.
In Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala
and Uruguay, abortion is also permitted
in cases of rape or incest, and Uruguay
allows for another exception as well:
economic hardship.
Colombia, Mexico and Panama also allow
abortion in cases of fetal deformities.
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