Reproductive rights in Colombia
The confusing reality of legality and access
“Aborten el patriarcado!” Abort the patriarchy. This is what the massive purple banners around me said as I marched up Bogotá’s Avenida Jiménez for the city’s International Women’s Day march last Sunday.
Straight up destroying the patriarchy seems like an apt rallying cry for Colombia’s feminist movement. On March 2, the Colombian constitutional court missed a major opportunity to expand the decriminalization of abortion, upholding the 2006 law that restricts legality to three specific situations (more on this later). Cases of femicide have caught international attention and sparked a flame behind feminist movements in the region, particularly in Mexico in Argentina. That energy has made its way to Colombia as well, as several feminist and reproductive-rights collectives band together for events like the one I attended on International Women’s Day.
Until last week, I honestly thought most abortions in Colombia were still illegal. I knew what the 2006 law said so I thought I understood the law. Turns out I was wrong. Through a flexible interpretation of the law — a legal loophole some might call it — abortion is legal and accessible to many women in Colombia.
The 2006 law decriminalizes abortion in the following circumstances: if the pregnancy is a consequence of rape or incest, when the fetus is mortally malformed, and when a doctor certifies that the woman’s life or health is in danger. It’s this last reason that leaves ample room for interpretation. A woman’s “health” can encompass many criteria, including mental health, which is where the wiggle room lies. According to my roommate, any pregnant Colombian woman can waltz into Profamilia (the Colombian equivalent of Planned Parenthood) and get a legal abortion if one of their clinicians certifies that the pregnancy poses a risk to the woman’s mental health and general well-being.
This is based on a seemingly radical but obvious premise: an unwanted pregnancy is a health issue.
Though legal abortions that rely on this premise have been going on since 2006, many Colombian women still do not understand this nor do they have reasonable access to doctors who will employ it. How can knowledge be so classist? How can some women know and some women not know? The most important fight feminists in Colombia should be fighting is one for knowledge and access.
Meanwhile, Profamilia has everything outlines neatly on its website. According to their mission statement, Profamilia’s purpose is to promote sexual and reproductive rights for the whole Colombian population. As such, they are the largest provider of abortion procedures in the country, despite the prevalent notion that abortion remains illegal. In trying to combat this piece of misinformation, Profamilia’s website prominently displays the following:
“ Abortion is legal in Colombian under Sentence C-355 from 2006.” Its that simple. Except its not simple at all when it comes to access: access to information, access to doctors who are willing to certify that the pregnancy poses a risk to the woman’s health, access to urban centers where one might find such a doctor, access to anyone or anything that might point to the loophole in the 2006 law.
One of the leaders in the feminist and reproductive rights movement in Colombia is the activist group las Viejas Verdes. Leader Hilda María described the movement’s main mission: to “defend our bodies, which is our first territorio (territory), and to learn to make independent decisions about it.”
María tells it like it is. Feminist movements should prioritize women’s autonomy and control over their own bodies above all else. Without that, women lose control of almost every other aspect of their lives.
Unfortunately here in Colombia, many women who have theoretical control of their bodies don’t have access to the knowledge or the spaces to take that control. This is why the law has to change to decriminalize abortion in all cases so that there is no confusion or doubt about it. All women of all backgrounds should have control over their own territorios. Period.
