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Women
Go Public for Legalized Abortion
María
Cecilia Espinosa
SANTIAGO, (IPS) - Abortion is
illegal in Chile, but according to
various estimates 75,000 to 200,000
are performed in this country every
year, often in conditions that
endanger the health and lives of the
women who choose to undergo the
procedure.
However, activists' efforts to bring
the issue into the public arena of
debate have run into a wall of silence
in this predominantly Roman Catholic
country.
As part of the
legalization
campaign, 232 Chilean women, all older
than 18, publicly admitted that they
had all voluntarily had abortions,
allowing their names and signatures to
be published on Sep. 28 in a
nationally distributed newspaper.
The aim of the initiative, promoted by
the Feminist Panel for the
Legalization
of Abortion, was to put the issue up
for debate and to pressure lawmakers
to amend the laws that since 1989 have
banned abortion in Chile under any
circumstances.
But the ostensibly innovative effort
failed to create controversy. Carolina
Carrera, member of the panel, said she
was not surprised by the silence from
across society because she is
convinced that the media and
politicians alike would rather keep
quiet on such contentious issues.
”It is like putting on a veil and
trying to avoid seeing that this has
emerged,” Carrera told IPS.
Carrera believes that abortion needs
to be legalized,
to uphold ”women's free and
voluntary choice to become mothers,”
and that women should be able to
interrupt pregnancies in the case of
rape or medical complications, without
the risk of being punished for that
choice.
”Democracy is based on the premise
that people have the right to
choose,” she stressed.
Ximena Zabala, director of the Women's
Institute Foundation, said in a
conversation with IPS that a revision
of abortion laws is necessary and
possible, if the veto of the de facto
powers is removed, because currently
they impede ”open discussion and the
opinions of all sides from having the
same weight.”
”It is an issue taken over by the
(Roman Catholic) Church,” Zabala
said.
Guido Girardi, a physician and a
legislative deputy of the Party for
Democracy, told IPS he thinks that
illegal abortion is useless because
women will undergo the procedure
anyway.
As such, Chilean society should be
open to the possibility of allowing
women to interrupt pregnancies when
”the mother's health is at risk”
or the pregnancy is the result of rape
or incest, he said.
Rosa Espínola, national coordinator
of the Network Forum for Health and
Sexual and Reproductive Rights,
defends the
legalization
of abortion with figures from
international studies, which state
that 160,000 to 200,000 abortions are
performed in Chile each year.
All abortions are clandestine, ”but
with the aggravating factor that women
from lower-income are endanger their
health and their lives,” says Espínola.
According to the World Health Organization,
four million abortions are performed
in Latin America annually, and some
6,000 women die as a result of
complications associated with the
procedure.
The Chilean Ministry of Health
calculates that the number of
clandestine abortions averages 75,000
a year.
But doctor René Castro, head of the
women's programme at the ministry, was
emphatic in telling IPS that ”making
it illegal, unfortunately, does not
prevent abortion.” Most of the women
who seek abortions are between the
ages of 20 and 25, he said.
Public health policies aim to prevent
unwanted pregnancies, and thus prevent
abortion. In the case of women who
have already had an abortion,
”instead of penalising, one should
rehabilitate, in the best sense of the
word,” he said.
”A woman who has an abortion is a
sort of 'delinquent', and, deeper
down, also a victim, due to the
situation that leads her to take such
a drastic decision,” says Castro.
Women who have undergone abortions --
all clandestine in Chile -- risk their
physical and psychological health, say
experts, as well as exposing
themselves to legal sanctions.
The clandestine nature of abortion in
Chile favours the incidence of
complications, as there is no
government regulation of the abortion
sites or the people performing them.
And the women who seek medical
attention as a result of complications
are treated very poorly, and ”run
the risk of being reported to the
authorities,” said Espínola.
Current Chilean law prohibits even
therapeutic abortion (performed to
save the life of the mother), which
was legal here from 1931 to 1989, and
establishes a minimum prison sentence
of three years and a day, and a
maximum of five years, for women who
have had an abortion.
Meanwhile, the penalties for those who
perform abortions range from 541 days
to three years in prison, with longer
sentences if the accused is a health
professional.
One of the pending discussions on the
matter is whether abortion can be
considered murder, given that Article
74 of Chile's Civil Code states that
the embryo or fetus is not considered
a person until it leaves the mother's
womb.
The Catholic Church, meanwhile,
asserts that the fetus is a person
from the moment of conception.
Two years ago, draft legislation on a
Framework Law on Sexual and
Reproductive Laws was presented in
Congress. Girardi says it ”must
still be in some committee, either
Health or Family.”
The slow going of the bill can be
blamed on the fact that ”in the
executive branch and the Health
Ministry there is no desire that the
initiative be debated or even
rejected. It is not even being
discussed,” said Espínola.
Nevertheless, Chile made a commitment
in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference
on Women, in Beijing, to revise its
laws that punish women who have
abortions.
In 1999, the United Nations Commission
on Human Rights and the Committee on
the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women pointed out to the
Chilean government that it should
revise its laws on abortion and
recommended at least reinstating
authorization
for abortion when the mother's life is
in danger.
The 232 women who admitted that they
had voluntarily sought abortion could
face legal problems, criminal lawyer
and legislative deputy Juan Bustos
told IPS.
Susana Herrera, anthropologist with
the Diego Barros Arana Research Centre,
conducted a study on abortion and how
women perceive it. The text includes
the testimonies of 12 women who had
abortions.
According to Herrera's study, the
women are both victims and culprits.
And in both categories society plays
an important role, by demanding that
they be perfect mothers -- an
unachievable goal -- and by turning
them into transgressors for having
become pregnant outside of the
established model of marriage.
”Women are forced to undergo a
pregnancy test. When they are fired
from their jobs (for being pregnant)
their labour rights are not recognized,
men abandon women when they become
pregnant, and pregnant adolescents or
teenage mothers are prevented from
continuing their education,” said
Espínola.
In other words, ”a series of factors
are pressing women to choose
abortion,” she said.
Castigation, loneliness and guilt
confront most women after they have an
abortion if they come to recognize
the fetus as a person, and thus regret
what they have done, she said.
Herrera says that criminalizing
abortion infringes on a woman's
”freedom to decide if she wants to
be a mother or not,” as well as
”her right to privacy,” because it
is a matter of her life and her body.
The ban on abortion implies
socio-economic and gender
discrimination.
Remedying this problem would require
raising social awareness, ”which
involves men and women alike,” said
the anthropologist.
The Feminist Panel is not giving up,
and will continue to gather the
signatures of women who have had
abortions, as well as signatures of
men and women who support the
legalization
of abortion -- and the group plans to
continue publishing the results.
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