Category: Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

The recently appointed Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, has clearly positioned himself as an advocate for safe, legal abortion and has called for the repeal of punitive abortion laws across Latin America and the Caribbean.

In his September 27 remarks at the Global Leaders Meeting on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, Almagro said “the Americas continue to have some of the most restrictive laws regarding sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms, and that reality has to change. Thousands and thousands of women die from illegal abortions every year in the Americas.” In Nicaragua and El Salvador, where Ipas works, abortion is banned completely.

“We have to fix this kind of genocide,” he said, emphasizing that progress on other issues of women’s equality such as poverty, employment and political participation cannot be addressed until women’s basic human rights to life and health are fulfilled.

Almagro joins a growing field of regional leaders calling for the repeal of criminal abortion laws. Advocates for women’s rights in the Americas hope this trend will build an environment that supports policy and law change to increase women’s access to safe abortion.

Such change is needed for the region to fulfill its commitments to the Montevideo Consensus, which calls for securing the sexual and reproductive rights and health of all people, without discrimination based on sex, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity, among other issues. In addition, nations across Latin America and the Caribbean must address unsafe abortion in order to achieve the new Sustainable Development Goals related to maternal health and gender equality.

“Almagro’s remarks not only support advocacy to repeal abortion bans in countries like Nicaragua, Chile and El Salvador, but also highlight the fact that access to safe and legal abortion in the region is key to achieving social justice and gender equality as a foundation of women’s and girls’ human rights,” says Cecilia Espinoza, Ipas youth and policy advisor.

As previously reported by SPW (here and here) , for some time now, growing obstacles have been impairing any movement forward in the legalization of abortion in Brazil.

Yet, despite many regressions and constraints, feminists groups committed to the right to decide continue to bravely resist anti-abortion forces.

This resistance was sharply illustrated at a public hearing held on August 6^th, 2015 at the Human Rights Committee of the Federal Senate to discuss a proposition aimed at regulating access to the voluntary termination of pregnancy up to the 12th week.  It is in many ways paradoxical that such a progressive proposal would have reached the level of the Senate level when, after the 2014 elections, the overall Brazilian legislative environment is the most conservative it has been since the mid 1960’s.  To understand this paradox it is necessary to briefly recap what has happened in Brazil in the realm of abortion politics since last year.

Between August and September 2014, two young women — Elizângela Barbosa and Jandira Magdalena dos Santos — died in Rio de Janeiro after resorting to clandestine unsafe abortions. While public authorities were entirely silent on the matter, these tragic deaths triggered wide indignation in society at large.

Dozens of articles were published in both the mainstream press and social media networks; a group of feminists from Rio launched a public petition to legalize abortion that would be presented to federal executive officials and the Supreme Court in March 2015; and, in this same occasion, Congressman Jean Wyllys (PSOL, Rio de Janeiro) tabled a law provision on Sexual and Reproductive Rights in the House, inspired by the Uruguayan laws of 2008 and 2012, which include a chapter on voluntary termination of pregnancy (see Grotz, 2015). During this same wave, a proposal to legalize abortion, technically known as SUG, was also presented to the Senate through Congress’ internet participatory mechanism (e-Legislativo) that allows citizens to submit law reform provisions.  Since the provision has gathered more than 20,000 signatures, it has automatically entered the formal legislative process.

By Sonia Corrêa

Read the full article on the Sexuality Policy Watch (SPW) website