Let's Talk Abortion
by Aisha Gawad
Abortion is one of those topics that the more confrontational of us adore - to debate it means arguing questions of religion, science, politics, law and the very nature of human life. It's not one of those subjects that people just discuss like one would discuss social security reform or tax policy - it's one of those subjects where if I am right, you are wrong, and there's no two ways about it. So as I embark on making the argument that abortion access is fundamental to women's rights, I understand that in doing so, I am automatically going against the strongly held beliefs of many. But at the same time, I make no claim as a moral authority on the issue of abortion - I'll leave that up to the individual. I am merely attempting to discuss the often ignored role that abortion plays in the expression of women's rights.
The debate over abortion and women's right plays out all over the world, but the countries of Latin America will serve as my prime example. In the largely Catholic societies of Latin America, the topic of abortion remains something of a taboo. Women in countries all across Latin America are denied access to information regarding family planning and abortion, and when a woman doesn’t know about the health options and procedures available to her, she risks exposing herself to unsafe medical practices. "Across the region, millions of abortions are performed every year, most of them under unsafe and clandestine conditions, and thousands of women die as a result," according to a Human Rights Watch report on abortion rights in Latin America. "In many countries in the region, the consequences of illegal abortions constitute a leading cause of maternal mortality."
Abortion is illegal in most Latin American countries, but steps are being taken to waive criminal penalties for women who get abortions when their health is at stake or when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. In Mexico, for example, women's rights groups have been pressuring the government to reconsider the country's abortion laws. In August 2008, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled to decriminalize abortions performed during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. This ruling will undoubtedly save many Mexican women, especially those living in poverty, from seeking dangerous and potentially life-threatening abortions.
Efforts to introduce new reproductive health bills have also made ground in countries like Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia. The progress is slow-going, but at least abortion is no longer seen as an issue that can be ignored without dangerous consequences.
Other Latin American countries, however, are not moving as rapidly as the aforementioned states in the crusade to reform reproductive rights. El Salvador, for example, enacted a law in 1997 to make abortions criminally punishable even when performed to protect the mother's life, when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, and when the fetus is severally deformed, according to Human Rights Watch. And in Nicaragua in 2004, the congress considered enacting the same kind of law, but the debate was so fierce it came to a standstill.
Even if a country has laws to protect women obtaining abortions for the above reasons, they are often not enforced or publicized. In Peru, terminating a pregnancy is legal only in order to save a woman's life or to avoid serious harm to her health. In reality, this law exists on paper only. Human Rights Watch issued an entire report dedicated to the status of abortion rights in Peru, and documented some serious violations to international standards and the country's own laws. "Women, adolescent girls, health providers, and government officials all described a situation where women and adolescent girls who were clearly eligible for legal abortions were refused or unable to access the service, with terrible consequences to their mental and physical health," says the Peru report.
According to HRW, Peru's legal system is still very unclear on abortion laws; and women along with health care professionals are scared of facing prosecution if they undergo or perform any kind of abortion, even the kind to save a woman's life. The Peruvian government, which has already begun to address this issue, needs to establish even clearer laws governing a woman’s reproductive rights and needs to further ensure that those laws are enforced and publicized, especially in the poor rural areas of the country.
HRW isn't alone in advocating for the inclusion of abortion rights as part of wider women’s rights. Many international bodies that govern humanitarian law agree, although not always in such explicit terms. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), for instance, says in General Comment 14 of its assessment of the right to health that a person has: "the right to control one's health and body, including sexual and reproductive freedom." It also says the state has a responsibility to improve "sexual and reproductive health services, including access to family planning, pre- and post-natal care, emergency obstetric services and access to information, as well as the resources necessary to act on that information" (emphasis mine).
Abortion statistics in Latin America are hard to come by and unreliable, largely due to the clandestine nature of the procedure, but HRW estimates that somewhere between "10 and 50 percent of women who undergo unsafe abortions require post-abortion medical attention for complications such as incomplete abortion, infection, uterine perforation, pelvic inflammatory disease, hemorrhage, or other injury to internal organs. These may result in death, permanent injury, or infertility."
Abortion is not just about the debate over whether it is morally acceptable to terminate a pregnancy. It is about a woman's right to know her own body, and to understand what her body is about to undergo. It is about her right to safe and reliable medical attention. It is about her right to freely seek information that will guide her decision about what is best for her physical body as well as her emotional health. Latin America's societies cannot shelve open discussion of the abortion issue without also shelving all these other issues that are vital to a woman’s health and well-being.
