(Credit: RAUL ARBOLEDA/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNN Spanish) --
The Constitutional Court of Colombia decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks of gestation.
After more than eight hours of debate, the high court made the historic decision with a simple majority of 5-4.
Until now, in Colombia, the Penal Code considered abortion legal in three specific cases: rape or incest, fetal malformation that makes her life unviable, or when the continuation of the pregnancy constitutes a danger to the life or health of the woman, certified by a doctor.
But whoever performs an abortion —or whoever performs it— outside of these three scenarios, was committing a crime.
That changed: now you can abort up to 6 months of pregnancy.
The Constitutional Court thus concluded the debate on the two demands that asked for the practice to be decriminalized and put the right to abortion in the foreground.
One of these demands was filed by the Just Cause Movement, which promotes the elimination of the crime of abortion from the Colombian Penal Code and which claims to be made up of more than 90 organizations and more than 150 key actors.
This movement seeks that "no woman goes to jail for deciding about her body; and so that health professionals can exercise their profession without criminalization or stigma."
According to Just Cause, by ruling in favor of eliminating abortion as a crime, the Court would achieve recognition of the "freedom and autonomy of women to decide on their bodies and life projects, fundamental characteristics of full citizenship."
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The other lawsuit was filed by lawyer Mateo Sánchez in 2020, in the midst of a social context in the country in which the total criminalization of abortion was discussed —including eliminating the three grounds— and bills in Congress for this same purpose. Sánchez said in an interview on the podcast of journalist Claudia Palacios.
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