A legal abortion seven months pregnant unleashes controversy in Colombia

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Photo taken in Mexico during a protest on September 28, 2019. Credit: CLAUDIO CRUZ / AFP via Getty Images

(CNN Spanish) - Abortion in Colombia is allowed in three cases: when the life or health of the mother is in danger, when there is a malformation of the fetus incompatible with life or when the pregnancy is the product of abuse, rape, incest, transfer of ovule or insemination not consented.

Angie Palta, a woman resident in Popayán in the department of Cauca, interrupted her pregnancy legally after seven months of gestation because she says she does not feel psychologically prepared to give birth.

Before having the abortion, Palta spoke with the radio Super Popayán. He explained that the relationship with his partner is not good and that he never wanted to have a baby.

"When we found out, he didn't give me joy," Palta said and said that many times he didn't have medical checkups, "no, I didn't want to, I don't want to and I don't feel prepared," he explained.

"I don't feel capable for anything in the world, no matter how much I have thought about it and had therapies, believe me not," Palta said.

CNN tried to contact Palta without success.

After psychological evaluations, the voluntary interruption of her pregnancy was authorized by a clinic under the endorsement of the Government and Profamilia, an organization that provides reproductive health services, and the abortion was performed.

Palta's decision unleashed controversy, especially in social networks where she was criticized by users against abortion, mostly due to the advanced state of pregnancy.

In a press conference on Tuesday, the executive director of Profamilia, Marta Royo, said that all the guidelines established in the Constitutional Court ruling that decriminalized abortion were followed, certifying that the case of Palta corresponds to one of the three causes decriminalized, the danger to the health of the mother, in this case, psychological.

“No woman who exercises her sexual and reproductive rights in Colombia should face barriers or be the victim of persecution, discrimination, accusations and social stigmas that violate her privacy,” said Royo.

The debate on the decriminalization of abortion in Colombia is revived within a few days of the Constitutional Court ruling on two lawsuits by lawyer Natalia Bernal Cano who, in one request, fully criminalize abortion and in the other one that recognizes herself as persons with rights to fetuses when they are in the womb, appealing the ruling of the high court that decriminalized abortion in the three grounds established in 2006.

A debate with many moral, ethical, religious and legal elements that is trending on social networks in that country and is the subject of everyday conversation amid voices in favor and against abortion.

Abortion