The right to decide crosses borders: Chile makes its seventh legal abortion march

The episode has opened a lively debate about abortion in Chilean society. At that time, unlike here where the interruption has been legal since 1921, In Chile, there was an absolutely prohibitive law dating from the time of dictator Augusto Pinochet. The statements of the President, Sebastian Piñera– who then pbaded her first term – in favor of the continuity of the baby's pregnancy forced the women of this country to leave July 25, 2013 for the first time in the street to request a free, safe and free abortion.

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"At that time, we went out because of the anger aroused by the president's speech and because they had denied the abortion to the baby. The forced motherhood of a raped girl was the triggerhe said minuteuno.com Verónica Ávila, one of the spokespersons of the coordinator feminist wrestling who organizes a new mobilization Thursday. The same one that takes place every 25th of July since 2013.

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Up & # 39; to 2017 Chile was part of a handful of Latin American countries that totally banned and penalized this practice. In July of this year, after two years of presentation and a tense debate, The Senate approved the legalization of the termination of pregnancy in case of risk of life for the mother, the impossibility of the fetus and rape. The project was sent by Michelle Bachelet, then president, and progressed in the granting of women's rights.

The law has been amended by Constitutional Court of Chile – whose function is the constitutional review of all standards- who decided that the doctors' conscientious objection should be added to that of the institutions.

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"The court has complicated women's opportunities. Invent the conscientious objection. But institutions do not have conscience: how are you going to oppose the conscience of an institution? This has generated that many institutions have refused to practice them, "said Ávila.

The last report of "Social monitoring of the law enforcement of pregnancy termination in three cases" prepared by the Action at the table for abortion in Chile, published in June this year, ensures that "Conscientious objection, declared and not declared, has become an obstacle for women to access the termination of pregnancy".

According to data from the Ministry of Health, one obstetrician in two in public hospitals declared his opposition to rape (50.5%), one in four in case of fetal infeasibility (28.6%) and one in five in case of vital risk (20.7%). ).

The difficult path to a law

The latest official estimates They indicate that in Chile between 60,000 and 70,000 abortions are performed each year. The largest proportion, about 2,000, are rape pregnancies. The number of badisted legal abortions being much lower than in 2015, it is therefore estimated that most are still executed secretly. As in Argentina, women who die from clandestine abortions are poor women.

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Ávila explained that creating a law that allows all Chileans legal, safe and free abortion also carries a complexity. Unlike our country, in which the Campaign presents each year a project – with the signature of representatives of the legislative power – In Chile, all regulations that modify the state's public resources must be presented exclusively by the president. A law that considers abortions in hospitals if or if it alters the public budget.

In 2018, a project was presented to Congress. decriminalize abortion but today, we do not talk about it in the forum yet.

Abort Racism

This year, the march has a new inclusive slogan. For the first time, Women from groups of African descent from Chile and black immigrants will participate. Coincidentally, the same day is commemorated the International Day of Afro-Latin American and Afro-Caribbean Women.

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"We decided to launch an anti-racist appeal for a free abortion, but not only because the dates coincide, but because in Chile some migrants are highly criminalized, in this case poor migrants and black migrants. There is an intersection intersection that we can not not take into accountExplains the activist.

Kayla Alencar, member of the collective Black Microsions and another spokesman for the anti-racist march said it would be a historic march. "It's an effort to badociate these two banners of feminism with both the anti-racist struggle of feminism and the free abortion."he explained.

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The woman, who is Brazilian and lives in Chile since 2013, said she decided to participate in the mobilization for the demand to end racism, but that "At our meetings, we realized that this was closely related to free abortion because our health system was characterized by structural racism."

Alencar also said that the march would be historic for the country because "Black is invisible. In schools, we do not speak of black populationss. They say that there were no African slaves, but there is information that they accounted for 30% of the population at the time of the colony. Many stayed, then there were new migrations and now there are Afro-descendants. "