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New Delhi: After Mexico and Argentina, one other Latin American nation has relaxed abortion legal guidelines. In what’s being celebrated as a “historic victory” for reproductive rights, Colombia has decriminalised abortion in the course of the first 24 weeks of being pregnant.
The constitutional court docket of the South American nation Monday dominated 5 in opposition to 4 to decriminalise the process, The Guardian reported.
Colombia earlier allowed abortion solely when there was a threat to the life or well being of the mom; if there existed any life-threatening foetal malformations; or if the being pregnant was a results of incest, rape or non-consensual synthetic insemination.
Latin America, with a robust Catholic and evangelical Christian foyer, is a historically conservative area. The abortion legal guidelines right here have been very restrictive, and the process is usually banned outright. Ladies getting unlawful abortions can resist three years in jail within the nation.
Based on the report in The Guardian, an estimated 400,000 abortions are carried out every year in Colombia, however solely 10 per cent of them are carried out legally. Not less than 26,223 unsafe abortions had been carried out throughout Colombia in 2020, based on native reproductive healthcare supplier Profamilia.
Quoting Causa Justa, a Colombian girls’s rights coalition, the report stated at the least 350 girls, together with ladies beneath the age of 18, had been convicted or sanctioned for abortions between 2006 and mid-2019.
“Now, as an alternative of punishing them, the Colombian authorities should recognise their autonomy over their our bodies and their life plans,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty Worldwide, stated in an announcement after the Colombian court docket’s order.
“We rejoice this ruling as a historic victory for the ladies’s motion in Colombia that has fought for many years for the popularity of their rights. Ladies, ladies and folks in a position to bear kids are the one ones who ought to make selections about their our bodies,” stated Erika.
“Our problem now could be to make sure that this ruling is carried out,” stated Cristina Rosero, lawyer for the New York-based advocacy group Heart for Reproductive Rights, which was one of many 5 organisations that filed a lawsuit in 2020 to get the court docket to evaluate Colombia’s abortions legal guidelines.
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Not All Pleased With Colombia Courtroom Choice
In Latin America, international locations that enable abortions with out restrictions till sure phases of being pregnant embrace Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba. In Mexico, a supreme court docket ruling not too long ago stated girls can not can’t be prosecuted for terminating pregnancies.
Final week, parliamentarians in Ecuador eased laws that now enable entry to abortion in instances of rape.
Some international locations, nevertheless, proceed to ban abortion with out exception — El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, for instance.
After Monday’s ruling in Colombia, as protesters in favour of entry to abortion celebrated in entrance of the constitutional court docket in capital Bogotá, additionally seen had been anti-abortion protesters who demonstrated in opposition to the ruling.
“We don’t perceive how this occurred,” Jonathan Silva, an activist for the pro-life group United for Life, was quoted as saying in an AP report. He stated he was shocked by the court docket’s resolution. “However we should stage protests, and name on members of congress to control abortion.”
It might be talked about right here that judges had met a number of instances prior to now two years to evaluate the lawsuit filed by girls’s rights teams, however shunned voting on it.
In a ballot carried out final yr, 25 per cent of the folks had been discovered to think about abortion a criminal offense, the AP report stated.
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