This Wednesday, Latin America wakes up inspired by a new green wave.
This time, the Argentine Senate has approved a project that allows free and legal access to abortion until the 14th week of gestation, two years after rejecting a similar proposal.
The change has been possible after months of public discussion, driven by young women, which made abortion cease to be a taboo and advance social decriminalization, causing some legislators to change their minds.
With this vote, she joins the handful of Latin American countries that guarantee the right of women to decide when and how to become mothers, something until now reserved for those who live in Cuba, Uruguay, Guyana and French Guiana, the Mexican State of Oaxaca. and Mexico City.
Feminist groups see today a little closer that the safe interruption of pregnancy is no longer a privilege reserved for those who have resources, but the Argentine case is still an oasis in access to abortion in Latin America.
In a region with five countries that prohibit it without exceptions (El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Haiti), the debate has other faces, such as those of the dozens of Salvadorans sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for gestational losses or Hondurans who clandestinely answer a telephone line that helps women to end their pregnancies safely, even at the risk of being imprisoned.
They are also stories like that of 'Esperancita', a 16-year-old teenager who died in 2012 in the Dominican Republic after being diagnosed with leukemia at the beginning of a pregnancy and who was delayed chemotherapy to avoid affecting the fetus.
This year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) admitted the case of the young woman who was denied therapeutic abortion.
"Argentina is a hope for all of Latin America," says from El Salvador the president of the Citizen Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion Morena Herrera, who has followed the debate in the Argentine Senate throughout the night, connected via WhatsApp with activists from other countries in the region.
“It is a process that moves the possibilities in Latin America.
I think it is very important for the arguments, for the rationale, because in Argentina it has been shown that the entire problem of the clandestine and illegal abortion is a health problem that must be treated as such and that causes greater inequalities because it affects much more to women living in vulnerable situations, who are the majority in our countries ”.
According to the World Health Organization, only one in four abortions performed in Latin America is done safely and it is increasingly common for women to terminate their pregnancies using clandestine methods or medicines such as misopostrol (traditionally used to treat gastric ulcers), acquired outside of formal health systems.
In addition, the Guttmacher Institute, a non-governmental organization, estimated that, as of 2017, more than 97% of the region's women of reproductive age lived in countries with restrictive laws, which did not prevent them from registering some 6.5 million abortions annually. between 2010 and 2014.
For this reason, the Salvadoran activist hopes that the debates heard in Argentina can be resumed in countries like hers where, she says, not only abortion is criminalized, but women who have involuntary pregnancy losses are persecuted and particularly those who they live in situations of poverty.
“I am hopeful that it opens the possibility of reflecting beyond whether I want or do not want abortion.
It is a deeper problem ”, he points out.
In addition to being able to end up in prison, women who decide to terminate their pregnancy in countries where it is completely prohibited often put their health at risk, a trend identified by the Dominican gynecologist and defender of women's rights Lilliam Foundeur.
"In the Dominican Republic, as in all countries in the world, women who want to interrupt their pregnancy interrupt it, even putting their life at risk," he explains.
And he regrets that, despite the fact that in his country they have been promoting the legalization of abortion for more than 25 years in the three basic causes (risk of the mother's life, unviability of the fetus, or that the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest), the Congress has not yet approved something that has an impact on the country having "unacceptable" maternal mortality rates.
Among the countries that have legalized abortion and the most restrictive, there is a wide range of grounds for which women are allowed or prevented from deciding on their bodies.
For example, Bolivia and Colombia consider abortion if the viability of the fetus is not assured, in cases of rape, incest, or if there is a threat to the life, physical or mental health of the woman.
In other countries, such as Chile, where abortion was decriminalized only three years ago, that possibility is given to women whose life is at risk or who demonstrate the unfeasibility of the fetus, while in Guatemala and Paraguay, women can only abort if your life is shown to be in danger.
That is almost equivalent to a de facto prohibition that acquires an even more restrictive look in Venezuela, where it is only allowed in cases of risk of death of "the woman in labor."
Venezuela: contraceptives as "humanitarian aid"
Venezuelan law allows abortion only in the event of the risk of death for the “woman in labor,” but there is no rule or protocol for the termination of pregnancy.
However, the definition of a woman in labor — and not a woman — places her at that moment of giving birth.
The Venezuelan Penal Code has much more archaic considerations and establishes reductions in penalties (from six months to two years in prison for women who abort and from one to three years for those who execute it) “in case the perpetrator of the abortion He has committed to save his own honor or the honor of his wife, his mother, his descendant, his sister or his adopted daughter ”.
This is known as an
honoris causa
abortion
in legal jargon.
In front of the GAN.
Caracas.
Nohelia from @Uquira_ 💚✊🏻 # SomosConLasPibas pic.twitter.com/J6xofLIFU1
- Melanie Agrinzones🌺 (@Miaulanie_) December 29, 2020
"We are far behind in this of the reproductive autonomy of women," says Magdymar León, clinical psychologist and activist of the Venezuelan Association for Alternative Sex Education (Avesa).
"Abortion is criminalized, we do not have comprehensive education, access to contraceptive methods and family planning services has greatly decreased in the midst of the humanitarian crisis and when these restrictions exist, more unwanted pregnancies and more unsafe abortions are generated."
As if it were a country at war, Venezuela is going through a complex humanitarian emergency and within the response plan developed by the United Nations, contraceptive methods have been distributed in the country, which in the most scarce time between 2017 and 2018 were only available in the black market, and now they are priceless in pharmacies.
A few months ago, dozens of women gathered in Táchira state, even with the restrictions of the pandemic, to receive hormonal implants to prevent pregnancies as part of humanitarian aid.
“Efforts have been made, but it is not enough.
They go as far as they go, like food, like medicine, like gasoline, ”says León.
An unwanted and unplanned pregnancy condemns the women of Venezuela - where 96% of the population lives in poverty - to sink even further into precariousness.
Despite this, in March of this year, Nicolás Maduro invited them "to give birth to six children," as the Chavista leader said in a television address.
León points out that although there are no statistics, there is a perception that abortions with unsafe methods have increased, as has the abandonment of children on the street or that they are delivered to shelters.
"The woman initiates the procedure at home in an unsafe way, with herbs or by inserting an object, such as hooks, into their vaginas, and they go to the health center to be treated."
Then all abortions are listed as spontaneous.
Now, the debate in Argentina also gives hope to Venezuelan activists.
For León, legalizing it in his country would allow establishing a general framework not only for women's rights, but also for education and access to better planning and information, which would help prevent unwanted pregnancies, if they are given the necessary resources. .
Religions, a drag on progress
In Brazil, where abortion is only legal in three cases, (rape, risky pregnancy for the woman or brain malformations of the fetus), the woman who wants to end a pregnancy does not have an easy path ahead, even if she meets the grounds provided by law.
This is because there is permanent pressure from influential conservative groups, mostly religious, to complicate access to that right.
The pressure and difficulties occur in various ways, among them the ruses arising from the Congress itself, which, from time to time, tries to push for new restrictions on the rules.
Another chronic obstacle is the health professionals who resort to conscientious objection to refuse to attend to women in these cases.
Only half of the Brazilian states have specialized clinics in this procedure, a situation that has worsened with the pandemic.
With the arrival of the ultra-conservative Jair Bolsonaro to power, in 2019, new restrictions were also added through regulations, such as one of the Ministry of Health that obliges the professional who attends a case of rape to notify the police, an additional step that does not it is provided by law.
In September, the case of a 10-year-old girl, who became pregnant after being abused by an uncle and who wanted to end her pregnancy, shocked Brazil.
Persecuted by religious groups in her small town, with the support of the government's ultra-conservatives and their followers, the minor was forced to travel almost 1,500 kilometers to be able to have an abortion in another state.
In other countries, such as the Dominican Republic or El Salvador, activists also blame the power of conservative and religious groups for not being able to change the laws and the Penal Code to allow abortion in some exceptions, such as when the life of the mother is in danger or other extreme circumstances.
“In theory we have a secular state, but that is just theory.
The power of the church and conservatism go along the same lines of restricting the rights of women ”, points out the Dominican gynecologist Lilliam Foundeur.
And although she believes that the Argentine case can help to create a precedent, she believes that, in the case of her country, change should be promoted by society itself.
"The population that has access to this information that comes from Argentina, which for us is far away, is seeing a little light, especially for the new generations," says Foundeur.
“But I believe that change has to come from below, that the population has to pressure the rulers to change.
A privileged group, as we are the defenders of women's rights, from above, we are not going to make the changes.
For that it is important that the information reaches beyond the headline through social networks ”.
Chile, the last to leave the list of the most restrictive
In Chile, from the last months of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in 1989 to September 2017, abortion was totally prohibited.
In those nearly three decades, the country held the record for the toughest laws in the world on women's reproductive rights.
Three years ago, in the second government of Michelle Bachelet, the law of interruption of pregnancy was promulgated on three grounds: danger of the mother's life, fetal infeasibility and rape.
Since then, 1,524 procedures have been carried out, according to figures updated as of last June.
It is a number well below what was projected.
Experts estimated some 70,000 clandestine interruptions of pregnancy annually, something that is partly explained by access barriers and because these humanitarian causes leave many women out. "Until June 2020, there was a decrease of at least 20% compared to to the same period of 2019. It could be explained by the pandemic, when at least 25% could not access benefits on voluntary interruption of pregnancy, as shown by our survey on the period, ”explains Javiera Canales, coordinator of the legal area of Corporación Miles , which trains professionals and prosecutes cases of Chilean women who have been denied access to abortions.
The lawyer indicates that in Chile there are theoretically 69 high-risk obstetric units where abortions can be performed, of which 67 are authorized.
In some of them, he denounces, protocols that add different requirements to the law to interrupt pregnancies, with total discretion.
Although the number of doctors in the public system who declare conscientious objection to perform abortions on the grounds of rape has decreased to 46%, the percentage remains very high.