Legal abortion in Colombia will help fight social stigma

BOGOTO (Associated Press) – She fainted from the first day of her pregnancy. Then came the incessant vomiting and venous thrombosis. Her health was not going well, nor her baby. Doctors warned him that a clot in his groin could go up to his lung. So she chose to boycott her pregnancy after nearly six months of crossing several barriers, even though her case is supported by Colombian law.

The history of women choosing to have an abortion in Colombia will be different from now on: the Constitutional Court decriminalized abortion until the twenty-fourth week of pregnancy.

Colombia overtook other Latin American nations on Monday by allowing unrestricted abortion for a longer period of time than its neighbors amid a growing green wave in the region. allowed in Argentina until week 14 and in Cuba and Uruguay until week 12; Whereas in countries such as Haiti, Nicaragua and El Salvador it is strictly prohibited.

In Colombia, there are still at least two challenges for female abortion advocates: removing crime from the criminal code and ending social stigma.

The 46-year-old engineer was raised in a traditional Catholic family but changed her beliefs after the termination of her pregnancy: “It’s not a sin,” she told The Associated Press 11 years after the procedure and just days before the court decision. The woman asked that her real name be concealed to tell her story, which not even her parents know.

And the woman recalled indignantly that the psychiatrist from the health care company she was treating, who had several times denied her an abortion, justifying conscientious objection, had called her one day to persuade her not to. “Life is wonderful, children are a blessing from God,” he told her.

Religion still has a significant influence in Colombian society. President Evan Duque, who defines himself as “pro-life,” was concerned about the scope of the court’s ruling because he believed it would be “to facilitate abortion almost as a method of contraception, a frequent and regular practice.”

On the other hand, the Catholic Church in Colombia expressed its “bewilderment and deep pain” at the court’s decision.

“The doctrine of the Church is very clear: life must be respected from the moment of conception until natural death, and therefore, the possibility of abortion in any way is not contemplated,” Monsignor Francisco Ceballos, head of the church, told the Associated Press. Life Promotion and Defense Committee.

The court’s decision implies that a woman can abort until the 24th week of pregnancy without having to go to a judge for permission.

“If a woman wants to have an abortion, she has to start the path in the health system where she is entitled to a comprehensive medical evaluation of her health and the state of her pregnancy. There is no requirement when that Within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, he added, doctors could object out of conscience, in which case they would refer the woman to another professional.

The court asked Congress to legalize and regulate abortion, which it has tried many times in the past without success. In the midst of the election campaign and less than a month before Colombians elected new members of Congress, the abortion issue was not the most popular one to gain votes.

Organizing Congress can take time. This happened with euthanasia — which the Court has outlawed since 1997 for terminally ill patients, and since 2021 for unvaccinated patients — and has not yet been legalized by Congress. The same thing can happen with a miscarriage.

“Congress cannot oppose the court’s decision,” Trevino said. However, constitutional expert Juan Manuel Chari made it clear that Parliament can make substantive changes to its bylaws and then it will be the court that approves or rejects them when conducting constitutional oversight.

Between 1998 and July 2019, 346 people were punished for the crime of abortion, of whom 85 were minors, according to data provided by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to the Just Cause movement, made up of one hundred women’s rights organizations.

Just Koz demanded the court to permanently abolish the crime of abortion from the Penal Code, which punishes whoever practices it or helps it with imprisonment for a period ranging from one to three years. The court made a mixed decision: the offense would not apply during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy and after that there would be three exceptions to abortion in force for 15 years, when the mother’s physical or mental health is at risk due to abnormalities. Of the fetus incompatible with life or if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest.

However, under the three exceptions, abortion turned out to be more difficult in practice than the defense organizations themselves believed. In the case of the woman who spoke to the AP, her life was in danger, but this was not enough to get her urgent approval. She had to wait several months while losing her body movement and looking for a private legal clinic where she had to pay about $500 for the practice despite the fact that Colombian law indicates that after requesting the termination of pregnancy must be so. This is done within five days.

“March April May; time passed, we had several medical boards, but the board of directors did not meet to present a solution and to be able to agree to the voluntary termination of pregnancy. They were reunited to be able to continue the pregnancy,” he recalls.

In addition to her thrombosis, she learned through a genetic test that her daughter had Down syndrome and heart disease that would have to undergo surgery at birth.

“I don’t want my daughter to call a ventilator a heart intervention, because I think she should have a quality of life, and I think it’s the least that a human should be in this complex world she’s in. I see that through a decision about quality of life and love”, So thinks the woman, who at that time was 35 years old and had a 13-year-old daughter.

For Dr. Laura Gill, the pro-abortion activist who treated the woman interviewed by the AP, one cause of social stigmatization is specifically criminalization, which leaves a woman’s right to access an abortion on the muddy ground. A pregnancy volunteer. “It’s almost hate speech to tell women that an abortion is going to hurt them when other things like unsafe abortion or forced motherhood are hurting them,” she told The Associated Press.