WOMEN-LATAM:
'Pro-Life'
Pressure Fails to Thwart 'Sexual Rights'
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - Washington and right-wing anti-abortion
groups lost an important battle in Latin America and the Caribbean
because despite their threats and pressure, they failed to keep the
terms ''sexual and reproductive rights'' out of the final document of
the regional conference on women.
In the Ninth Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the
Caribbean, held Jun. 10-12 in Mexico City, ''the United States
blackmailed several delegations to prevent the use of the terms 'sexual
and reproductive rights' in the final document,'' Lilián Celiberti, with
the Articulación Feminista Marcosur -- an umbrella of women's groups
from South America's Mercosur trade bloc -- told IPS.
But in the end, the pressure failed.
In the view of the U.S. administration of George W. Bush and
conservative ''pro-life'' groups, the mere mention of sexual and
reproductive rights is equivalent to promoting abortion. They demand
that only the term ''reproductive health'' be employed.
In the final declaration, the region committed itself to debating and
implementing legislation ''that guarantees the responsible exercise of
sexual and reproductive rights and access without discrimination to
health services, encompassing sexual and reproductive health.''
That priority, along with the goal of guaranteeing gender equality, and
the fight against gender violence, will be the objectives forwarded by
Latin America at next year's Beijing+10 Conference in New York, to be
held 10 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women held in
Beijing, China.
''We see what happened in Mexico as very disturbing, because the
pro-abortion and pro-lesbian groups imposed a stance against life and
morality, which does not at all represent the view of this region,''
Rocío Gálvez, president of the conservative Catholic organisation
Provida (Pro-life) in Mexico, commented to IPS.
Gálvez complained that delegates from the Vatican and organisations
opposed to abortion were ''deliberately'' excluded from several of the
debates at the conference, and that ''in the end, a vision was imposed
that has nothing to do with the thinking of a vast majority of Latin
Americans.''
Those groups, in sync with the policies of the Bush administration,
which promotes abstinence and faithfulness, are also mainly opposed to
the use of birth control and to broad-based sex education.
Celiberti said several of the delegations participating in the regional
conference, especially the ones from certain Central American countries,
received direct threats from Washington that their financial assistance
would be cut if they agreed to the use of the term ''sexual rights''.
At the end of the conference, which was convened by the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), most of the
roughly 400 delegates burst into loud applause and embraced, while a
minority, including U.S. delegate Ellen Sauerbrey and the delegations
from El Salvador and Nicaragua, which backed Washington's positions,
remained stiffly silent.
''We cannot celebrate the fact that pro-abortion and pro-lesbian groups
hijack the majority of the conferences where reproductive health is
discussed, and we demand that ECLAC and the governments, in honour of
democracy and pluralism, also open the door to other currents,'' said
Gálvez.
The ''pro-life'' movement is against birth control, divorce, and
same-sex unions, and advocates only the model of the traditional family
headed by the husband, in which the mother transmits so-called
''family-oriented'' values.
Clashes between conservatives and women's activists are typical at
meetings where the sexual and reproductive rights of women are
discussed.
In the 1990s, unsafe abortions were the focus of heated debate in the
United Nations.
''Despite the tension and the pressure from conservative sectors, the
final outcome of the debates over the last few years was positive,
including growing recognition that the need to decriminalise abortion is
a legitimate human rights question,'' says a report by the
non-governmental Catholics for the Right to Decide.
At the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo,
Egypt in 1994, governments recognised that unsafe abortion was a major
public health problem.
The conference recommended that abortion should not be promoted as a
family planning method; the number of abortions should be reduced by
guaranteeing access to contraceptives; women should have access to
services to manage the complications of unsafe abortion under all
circumstances; and abortion should be safe in circumstances in which it
is not against the law.
In Beijing, a year later, these concepts were reaffirmed, and it was
recommended that ''Member states should consider reviewing existing
punitive legislation (with respect to abortion).''
Abortion remains illegal in nearly all countries of Latin America and
the Caribbean. Nevertheless, more than four million clandestine
abortions are practiced in Latin America every year, according to the
United Nations population fund (UNFPA).
Complications of unsafe abortion account for 21 percent of maternal
mortality in Latin America, according to the World Health Organisation
(WHO).
Some 20 million clandestine abortions are performed around the world
every year, and around 78,000 women die as a result of complications,
adds UNFPA.
For every 1,000 women of child-bearing age (15-49), an estimated 30
unsafe abortions are performed in Latin America. In addition, around
2,200 women and teenage girls are hospitalised in the region daily due
to complications from unsafe abortions.
''I hope that in Beijing+10 there is more tolerance, and that it is made
clear that not all social groups advocate anti-family practices like
abortion and homosexuality,'' said the director of Provida.
U.S. pressure against the legalisation of abortion has been felt
elsewhere in the region in the past few months.
In late April, six lawmakers from Bush's governing Republican Party sent
a letter to Uruguay's senators just before they voted on a reproductive
health bill that would have legalised abortion in the first 12 weeks of
pregnancy.
''We encourage you in this historic time in your country...to (vote)
against this pro-abortion bill and also to refuse to leave it up to a
referendum,'' said the letter faxed from the office of New Jersey
Representative Christopher Smith.
The bill was defeated by just three votes. |
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