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BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Having an abortion is now not against the law below Colombian regulation, the nation’s prime court docket dominated on Monday, in a call that paves the way in which for the process to turn into extensively out there throughout this traditionally conservative, Catholic nation.
The ruling by Colombia’s Constitutional Courtroom follows years of organizing by girls throughout Latin America for larger protections and extra rights, together with entry to abortion, and important shifts within the area’s authorized panorama.
Mexico’s Supreme Courtroom decriminalized abortion in the same resolution in September and Argentina’s Congress legalized the process in late 2020. Colombia’s resolution implies that three of the 4 most populous international locations in Latin America have now opened the door to extra widespread entry to abortion.
It additionally comes as america has been transferring in the other way, with abortion restrictions multiplying throughout the nation, and the U.S. Supreme Courtroom contemplating a case that might overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional proper to abortion
“This places Colombia on the vanguard in Latin America,” mentioned Mariana Ardila, a Colombian lawyer with Girls’s Hyperlink Worldwide, a part of the coalition that introduced one among two instances difficult the criminalization of abortion. “That is historic.”
The court docket’s resolution decriminalizes abortions within the first 24 weeks of being pregnant, and implies that any lady ought to be capable to search the process from a well being skilled with out concern of felony prosecution. It additionally units the stage for the Colombian authorities to control the method additional.
The transfer is a part of a cultural sea change throughout Latin America, spurred by grass-roots feminist actions and a youthful, extra secular era.
In a area traditionally recognized for its Catholic religion and social conservatism, a rising push for ladies’s rights and abortion entry gained prominence a little bit greater than a 12 months in the past when Argentina grew to become the most important nation in Latin America to legalize abortion.
Quickly, abortion rights supporters throughout the area, from Mexico to Paraguay, Brazil to Colombia, have been sporting or brandishing inexperienced handkerchiefs — the image of Argentina’s abortion rights motion — to point out their solidarity with girls’s sexual and reproductive rights. The handkerchiefs grew to become symbols of the work that ladies’s rights attorneys and activists had been doing extra quietly for years.
The Argentina resolution reverberated throughout Latin America, exhibiting that it was potential to legalize abortion in international locations with robust Catholic and evangelical Protestant beliefs and a historical past of patriarchal beliefs.
In September, Mexico’s Supreme Courtroom dominated that it was unconstitutional to make abortion against the law, serving to to clear the way in which for the legalization of the process within the nation of about 130 million individuals.
The Constitutional Courtroom magistrates in Colombia thought-about over the previous few months two petitions that challenged the portion of the penal code that made abortion against the law.
In a single, a lawyer named Andrés Mateo Sánchez Molina mentioned the measure violated rights protected by the Structure, together with the precise to human dignity, freedom and equality.
In one other, introduced by Causa Justa, a coalition of abortion rights teams, attorneys argued that criminalization had solid abortion in such a unfavourable gentle that it prevented even girls with a authorized proper to an abortion from getting one.
In some instances, the coalition mentioned, the existence of the felony penalty led well being professionals to disclaim the process to girls who certified for it. In others, girls averted searching for abortions in authorized well being facilities out of concern they’d be jailed, as an alternative searching for dangerous alternate options in underground clinics.
“These boundaries have an effect on primarily girls dwelling in rural and distant areas, low-income girls, adolescent women, girls and women dwelling in conditions of armed battle and victims of gender violence, together with bodily and sexual violence,” representatives of Causa Justa wrote in a abstract of their petition. Making the process against the law in most circumstances, they argued, was subsequently unconstitutional.
In the end, the court docket determined to listen to the Causa Justa case first. The second case can be heard at a later date, however the first resolution can’t be reversed.
Lots of of abortion rights supporters and dozens of their opponents stood outdoors the courthouse in Bogotá awaiting a call on Monday afternoon.
In current months, each side have carried out dueling public campaigns to attempt to sway the choice, and their rallies got here to represent the nation’s cultural divide on the problem.
Girls within the crowd danced with inexperienced handkerchiefs over their head because the information moved via the group, prompting Jonathan Silva, 32, to stroll away angrily. An evangelical Christian who works for Unidos Por La Vida, an anti-abortion group, Mr. Silva mentioned the court docket had overstepped its energy and it was a call that ought to be made by elected officers.
“What they’re decriminalizing is the killing of human beings,” he mentioned.
Till now, abortions had been authorized solely in restricted circumstances, laid out by a 2006 Constitutional Courtroom resolution: when a lady’s well being was in danger, when a fetus had severe well being issues or when a being pregnant resulted from rape. Anybody else who had an abortion — or who helped a lady receive one — may very well be sentenced to 16 to 54 months in jail.
Abortion rights activists usually mentioned that this authorized panorama created a two-tier system: Wealthier girls in cities might get an abortion as a result of they knew easy methods to use one of many exceptions specified by the regulation, whereas poorer girls with much less training had restricted information or means to take action.
Prosecutors in Colombia open about 400 instances every year in opposition to girls who’ve abortions or individuals who assist them, in line with the lawyer common’s workplace. No less than 346 individuals have been convicted in such instances since 2006.
Practically all of those abortion-related investigations have been in rural areas, involving women as younger as 11, in line with researchers with Causa Justa.
Unlawful abortions may be unsafe and trigger about 70 deaths a 12 months in Colombia, in line with the nation’s well being ministry.
A current survey by the nonpartisan agency Ipsos discovered that whereas 82 p.c of Colombian respondents supported abortion in some circumstances, simply 26 p.c supported it in all instances — and the court docket’s resolution is prone to trigger friction as abortion rights activists, policymakers, well being care suppliers and others decide the way it ought to be carried out.
The choice can’t be altered by different authorized our bodies.
Colombia’s Constitutional Courtroom is taken into account by many authorized specialists to be extra liberal than the nation at giant, and plenty of current liberal shifts, together with the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2016, resulted from the court docket’s selections.
The court docket can be thought-about a authorized trendsetter within the area, mentioned Francisco Bernate, a regulation professor on the College of Rosario in Bogotá, and the choice is prone to entice the eye of judges throughout Latin America.
Activists in america are additionally following the modifications within the area.
“These struggles are linked,” mentioned Serra Sippel, the chief international advocacy officer at Fos Feminista, an alliance of reproductive rights teams that works all over the world, together with in america. “We within the U.S. can actually study lots.”
Sofía Villamil and Megan Janetsky contributed reporting from Bogotá.
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