Abortion in Latin America: an urgent conversation in the midst of the pandemic
SANTIAGO, CHILE — The coronavirus has come to transform our lives; it has highlighted the shortcomings of the health system and shown the vulnerability of certain sectors of the population.
One of the major debates and issues during the pandemic has been the increase in violence against women. During the lockdown, the governments have launched campaigns to prevent more deaths from violence against women, but it all comes down to intentions that do not address the underlying issues and do not guarantee women protection from their daily problems
At the same time, the debate on abortion has been placed on the back burner. Women confined by the pandemic have stopped going out to demonstrate in defense of their rights and the governments of many countries have paused the conversation on abortion. It is not considered a priority at this time.
Due to the collapse of hospitals because of the coronavirus, many emergencies from clandestine abortions will go unattended. In addition, legal abortion services have been reduced in countries where abortion is legal. There is a common complaint from feminist organizations that:
“You don’t die from abortion, you die from being poor”
Due to the outsized influence that religion has had for centuries in the region, the Latin American reality has a double standard, where it is morally wrong to have an abortion, but if you have money, or you come from an influential family, some doctors in private clinics are willing to perform an abortion and declare it as appendicitis.
The reality is uneven, but that is not the main problem. Since COVID-19, many organizations that support women seeking abortions at home have denounced the rise in the price of abortion pills and the increase in false advertising leading to scams that take advantage of women in a desperate and timely situation.
Abortion in Chile
The crisis unleashed by the coronavirus has increased the difficulty of effective access to abortion medicines, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, a situation that has been warned about by midwives and gynecologists who are members of Health Professionals Network for the Right to Decide, the Coordinadora Feminista 8 de Marzo and by organizations that aid women who terminate their pregnancies.
The public health system has not been prioritized comprehensive care in terms of sexual and reproductive rights in the context of the pandemic, and feminist organizations have reported an increase in partner violence, specifically between married and cohabitating couples, which in turn lead to sexual violence and the possibility of unwanted pregnancies.
In addition, the Chilean Association for the Protection of the Family (Aprofa), a member of the Action Roundtable for Abortion in Chile, recorded 520 abortion cases since April until today.
Meanwhile, according to a survey conducted by the Organization for Sexual and Reproductive Rights Miles, 74% of women have had issues accessing contraceptives during quarantine. This would translate into a large number of unwanted pregnancies, since according to the WHO warning, this percentage is well above what was anticipated, the WHO considered in their predictions that a decrease of only 10% in sexual and reproductive health services already implied an alarming crisis with millions of unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions worldwide.
In addition, according to information from Corporación Humanas, of the 1,148 obstetricians hired by the public health services, 50.5% have invoked conscientious objector status in the case of rape; 28.6% have declared themselves objectors in the case of non-viability of the fetus, and 20.7% have done so even when there is vital risk to the mother.
These data shows how little a woman’s decision counts in the face of an objecting doctor, and how vulnerable her reproductive rights are. All this in addition to the fear of attending a medical center and contracting Covid-19 .
In Chile, abortions are only possible for the three reasons mentioned above.
Abortion in Ecuador
In Ecuador, there is a feminist network that provides information to women that wish to terminate their pregnancies with pills whose actions have also been affected by the pandemic.
The organization Las Comadres, provides support by phone. But, since the lockdown, they have had to change their communication channels, in order to protect the privacy of the women who contact them.
Today, their main support is Telegram, as text messages have become the main channel of connection for those women who are determined to end their pregnancy, but who cannot make voice calls for fear that their relatives will hear them.
Illegal abortion remains a silent reality.
Abortion in Argentina
It is currently the Latin American country that is closest to achieving legal abortion, it is the hope for many women in the region who see a pathway to legalizations as a possibility, following approval in Argentina.
However, Covid-19 has effectively postponed the new bill to legalize voluntary abortion that would have been presented to the Chamber of Deputies by President Alberto Fernández.
The bill was to be submitted on March 13, but coincided with the declaration of a total quarantine and although the document is ready, its approval has been postponed indefinitely.
The Legal and Technical Secretary of the Presidency, Vilma Ibarra, has declared in the Argentinean media that:
“we are in the worst of all worlds, because abortions happen by the hundreds of thousands” and “women die in clandestine abortions, threatened with prison”
However, for feminist organizations this has been a setback at a time when safe abortion is becoming a social emergency and more than ever, they continue to create actions to exert pressure and make visible the need for a law that guarantees safe access to termination of pregnancy without conditions.
Abortion in Colombia
In Colombia, abortion has been legal since 2006 on three grounds: rape, fetal malformation incompatible with life outside the uterus, and risk to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.
However, all other abortions are still considered a crime with penalties of one to three years in prison. According to the Attorney General’s Office, 2,290 women were arrested for abortion between 2005 and 2017. Of these, 502 are minors.
In addition to three girls ages 11 and 12 who were sexually abused, there are 499 adolescents ages 14 to 18 who were brought to justice. In other words, 25.2% of the women arrested for abortion in Colombia were minors and the law makes no allowances as to the reasons that led them to make the decision.
Today there is still harassment and moral condemnation against those who decide to have an abortion. And in the new context the numbers of unwanted pregnancies continue to increase, without any guarantees from abortion laws.
Abortion in Mexico
The only areas where abortion is legal are Mexico City (since April 2007) and Oaxaca (2019), where women are allowed to terminate their pregnancies up to 12 weeks of gestation.
Each year in Mexico, between 750,000 and 1 million women perform clandestine abortions. This is the fourth leading cause of death, according to data from the Maternal Death Observatory (OMM).
Although rape is considered a legal cause for pregnancy termination throughout the country, each state differs on the reasons for allowing or punishing the mother after her decision.
Abortion in Brazil
In Brazil, abortion is legal under special circumstances. After the start of the quarantine decreed in the state of São Paulo, Pérola Byington Hospital, which is dedicated to caring for victims of sexual violence, suspended the performance of the pregnancy termination procedures provided for by law.
Five days later, under pressure from the feminist movement, the São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office succeeded in having the legal abortion services resume.
According to reports from Sempreviva Organização Feminista (SOF), voluntary termination of pregnancy procedures have been halted in some hospitals, in order to allocate them to patients infected with Covid-19.
For feminist organizations, legal abortion service is considered essential, since it is not an elective surgery that can be postponed and many girls and adolescents are sexually abused daily and become pregnant against their will.
Even the SOF denounces that this lack of attention in health services can lead many women to resort to unsafe methods to terminate their pregnancies, which can put their lives at risk and leave them unprotected in this particularly delicate context.
Abortion in Uruguay
Uruguay is the only country in South America where the termination of pregnancy is performed up to 12 weeks without restrictions.
In March of this year, feminist and professional organizations dedicated to women’s health heard a statement from Uruguay’s new president: the mega businessman Luis Lacalle Pou, during a press conference stating that his government is aligned with the conservative pro-life agenda, which sparked countless criticisms.
In response, Lilian Abracinskas, director of the NGO Mujer y Salud en Uruguay (MYSU), stated that, “despite the president’s statements, legal abortion in Uruguay is guaranteed by law and cannot be altered by the president.
However, according to the activist, the constitutional guarantee does not prevent the government from trying to make access to legal abortion more precarious or difficult.
“There is no law that says they can do it, but they can stigmatize the practice of abortion, so this statement by Lacalle Pou is very worrying, absolutely without any legal framework to protect it,” she says.
The outlook in the region
As we can see, and even without dealing with cases from other countries in which the reality is quite similar to that reported here, there is a common outcry from organizations in defense of the rights of Latin American women:
Sex Education to decide
Contraceptives not to abort
Legal abortion to NOT die
In Latin America, legal abortion is guaranteed without restrictions in only five countries: Cuba, Uruguay, French Guiana and Puerto Rico or in specific territories, as is the case in Mexico.
The most alarming cases can be found in the most restrictive countries in terms of abortion rights, such as El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti, where the prohibition on interrupting pregnancy under any circumstances coexists with high rates of sexual violence against women and penalties for abortion are often double those for rape. A large number of women who have suffered miscarriages are now in prison with sentences exceeding 20 years.
All this is happening in the midst of a pandemic where some conservative authorities see this as an opportunity to condemn the progress on women’s sexual and reproductive rights, despite the fact that the World Health Organization has recognized abortion as an essential health service since 2012.
Feminist organizations are now better organized and united than ever before and are not willing to let years of struggle be limited by political or circumstantial exploitation.
