The global map of abortion | Six out of ten women …

From Vancouver

Six out of ten women of childbearing age live in countries that largely allow abortions. Over the last 25 years, there has been an "overwhelming" trend towards liberalization of laws, in contrast to a series of recently approved restrictions in the United States. During this period, about fifty countries have reformed their regulations in order to expand access to the termination of pregnancy. This is revealed by a new world map of abortion, presented at the Women Deliver 2019 conference, which ends Thursday in this Canadian city, after four days of intense debates on gender equality, badual rights and reproductive and development. women and girls. The most curious, in the eyes of Argentina, is that in the planisphere are painted in blue the countries with laws that authorize the voluntary termination of pregnancy: this seems to be a mockery of anti-rights. The map, prepared by the Center for Reproduction Rights (CRR), can be viewed at worldabortionlaws.org
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Argentina is colored yellow with 55 other countries. This color represents those who have rules allowing abortion to preserve women's health.

"The laws have improved over the last quarter of a century, even though we feel that they have gotten worse, that they are more restrictive and that this has not happened." only in a handful of countries like El Salvador and Poland, "he said. Page / 12 Verónika Cernadas of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a North American organization that is arguing in US courts against laws that limited access to abortion in recent months in states with Republican governments, challenging openly the constitutional right, the ultimate goal of forcing the Supreme Court to rule on the issue, which since the arrival of Trump has a greater conservative bias.

However, the "extremely unacceptable" bans of the United States could send a dangerous message to other countries, said Katherine Mayall, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR). "It may seem like we are constantly inundated with information about the regression. (But) there is really a lot to celebrate," he said. they had a "marked contrast" with the general trend.

Cernadas pointed out that the majority of the American population does not support the anti-abortion advance against abortion.

The map has just been updated until April of this year. This is the first time it has been presented as part of WomenDeliver and this is a hallmark of previous conferences held since 2007 every three years and which was previously a marginal issue on the agenda and which is now present in most panels – since the inauguration of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday – as a fundamental right of women to be able to decide their own bodies.

"Today, abortion is a global claim," said Cernadas, who expressed support for Argentina 's struggle.

The report that accompanies the map of abortion shows that in the last 25 years – since the International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo and where badual and reproductive rights as human rights are currently being defined for the first time – 15 countries have reformed their legislation to allow abortion on demand for women (including Uruguay, Africa South, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Albania, Guyana and Nepal); and 18 countries have revoked the complete ban and put in place regulations legalizing it under different circumstances (such as Chile, Iran, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others). The reforms have been carried out in countries with a wide variety of geographical regions and continents, but mainly in Africa, where nearly half of the population lives.

By contrast, in the United States, Alabama enacted the strictest abortion law in the United States last month, banning it even in cases of rape. Other states have banned the termination of pregnancy after the detection of fetal heart rate. "These are the laws of men," said famed lawyer Nancy Northup, director of CRR, at one of the plenary sessions. Northup announced that it would sue all states to repeal laws restricting access to abortion and was very applauded.

The CRR card divides the world into five colors, depending on the degree of restriction of the abortion. And this reflects the percentage of women of reproductive age living in each of the legal categories:

* 5% (90 million) in countries where this is completely forbidden, even when the life of the woman is in danger. In total, there are 29. Several are in Central America, including El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. During the conference, the situation of women suffering from spontaneous abortions was reported. They were incarcerated and sentenced to prison terms of more than 30 years. In Honduras, there are 42 prisoners for this accusation, he was alerted.

* 22% (359 million women of childbearing age) live in countries where abortion is allowed only to save a woman's life. In total, they are 39.

* 14% (237 million), where it is legal when the health of women is in danger, among them, Argentina. There are 56 countries.

* 23% (386 million), where you can abort for social and economic reasons. There are 14 countries.

* 36%, the highest percentage (590 million), where it is fully legalized. There are 67 countries, the vast majority of which is called the first world.

Because of the laws that criminalize this practice, the CRR warns, at least 23,000 women and adolescents die each year from unsafe abortions.