Women protest this Thursday in Quito in favor of abortion. Jose Jacome (EFE)
With a taste of partial victory, the National Assembly of Ecuador approved this Thursday the law proposed by Assemblywoman Johanna Moreira to regulate the requirements for a raped woman to have access to an abortion.
Rape victims over the age of 18 will be able to abort up to 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Minors, women from rural areas and indigenous communities, up to 18 weeks.
"Adult women are going to sacrifice ourselves for the raped girls of this country," Moreira sentenced.
In order to get enough votes for the Law that Guarantees the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy in cases of Rape to pass the legislative process, two votes had to be made.
The initial proposal that allowed adult women to abort up to 16 weeks did not get the necessary 70 votes and remained at 66. Moreira, from the Democratic Left, acknowledged in her presentation that the dissent had even generated a break within her political party and , seeing his proposal rejected, asked for time to reconsider the text.
Upon his return to the Ecuadorian Congress, with a broken voice, he brought a second proposal where the time limit for girls and adolescents remained the same at 18 weeks, but the general rule for raped adult women was waived at four weeks.
From 16 passes to 12 weeks as the maximum term to perform an abortion.
"We have had to change the deadlines, against our will, to give way to consensus," proclaimed the promoter of the bill now approved, but pending the presidential veto.
With this resignation, the norm garnered a sufficient majority of 75 affirmative votes, against 41 negative and seven abstentions.
Seven other legislators were absent from the final session on abortion that had been debated since November.
Moreira justified the sacrifice of adult women to "sensitize" the National Assembly.
"But, above all, the sacrifice of impoverished women because they are the ones who are not going to be able to perform an interruption of pregnancy," he stressed with a tone and face of resignation, recalling that in rural areas and in the indigenous communities of Ecuador there are women "who, due to their condition of poverty, do not realize that they are pregnant even until the 20th week".
In the case of women with mental disabilities who are raped and become pregnant,
The interruption of pregnancy in cases of rape was already decriminalized since April of last year by a pronouncement of the Constitutional Court.
What was pending until this Thursday was to legislate a text that would set the requirements to do so, with the indication of the body of magistrates not to put obstacles.
But the lack of agreement on the time limit led Congress to an intricate debate charged with religious dogmas, which was only resolved in the final vote after reducing the term for adult women.
Ecuador has not started the debate on abortion without grounds and this new exception for rape victims still has to overcome an additional step: the presidential veto.
President Guillermo Lasso, who is conservative and openly religious, has 30 days to rule on the new law or send it to the Official Registry for it to come into effect.
While the Assembly was entangled in the debate on the deadlines and started with a proposal to allow abortion until the 28th week, the president stepped in and announced that the law would be vetoed if it contradicted the constitutional mandate.
Until now, he has not clarified what time period he is, in his opinion, framed in that criterion, but he has ratified his personal criterion that life begins from conception and ends with death.
He has also not advanced whether, in case there is a veto, it will be only partial or the entire text.
That last scenario would again leave Ecuador without a legal framework that defines how raped women can access an abortion.
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