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ABORTION IN THE AMERICAS

Abortions not safe, legal or rare in LatinAmerican and the Caribbean

BY MIRTA OJITOMAO35@COLUMBIA.EDU

Seven countries in Latin America and theCaribbean — El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras,Chile, Suriname, Dominican Republic and Haiti —do not allow abortions for any reason, not even tosave the life of the mother, according to JenniferFriedman, senior program officer of theInternational Planned Parenthood Federation.

Women who are suspected of having abortionsare prosecuted and often sentenced to prison.One such woman is Glenda Xiomara Cruz, 19, ofEl Salvador, who, on Oct. 30, 2012, miscarried herbaby and is now serving a 10-year sentence foraggravated homicide.

Cruz is the mother of a 4-year-old girl. Herabusive partner testified against her in court.

Both PBS and BBC have reported that theprosecution relied heavily on that man’s testimonyof her guilt.

A chilling story in The Miami Herald on Nov. 23,contained the following paragraph: “Abortion isillegal in Haiti, but women and girls are losing theiruteruses and their lives as they turn toclandestine, increasingly deadly ways to terminatetheir pregnancies. These unsafe abortions are

leading to a public-health crisis in a region with one of the world’s highest rates of unintendedpregnancies, experts say.

And this: “Haiti’s health ministry, which has sought to take charge of the abortion debate, has estimatedthat unsafe abortions account for 20 percent to 30 percent of maternal mortality. But the reality is, theannual number of abortion-related deaths is unknown.”

The reality is that women in the Americas are having abortions, whether they are legal or not. Theestimated number of abortions in Latin America increased slightly between 2003 and 2008, from 4.1million to 4.4 million, according to a report released last year by the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual andreproductive health think tank in the United States.

Of those millions of abortions, 95 percent were not considered safe, which means they were most likelynot conducted by professionals or took place in unsanitary, and therefore dangerous, conditions (thinkcoat hangers and mysterious potions, think U.S. pre-Roe v. Wade in 1973).

Not surprisingly, most of the women who seek the help of unqualified “doctors” for their abortions arepoor. The number of Latin American people living in poverty in 2013 grew to around 164 million,according to a just released report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America; 68million live in extreme poverty.

Extreme poverty is one of the preoccupations of the man Time magazine has chosen as Person of theYear, Pope Francis. In late November, he strongly criticized free-market global economies for

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Posted on Saturday, 12.21.13

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perpetuating inequality and emphasized that the church needs to stand with the poor and thedisadvantaged.

Being from Argentina, he understands well the needs of this region. He knows the link between povertyand everything else that ails the continent, and he knows the influence that the church still exerts in LatinAmerica.

Though the anti-abortion laws are matters of the state, it is undeniable that the church exerts a stronginfluence in the countries where the laws are most punitive against women.

And yet, when asked, the pope has said there is no need to obsess over these issues. Last Septemberhe told an interviewer that the church had grown “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage andcontraception, and that he had chosen not to talk about those issues even if his critics, from theconservative wing of the church, wanted him to.

Fair enough.

But there is a need to talk about changing the laws that make sacred temples of ordinary women’sbodies. The bodies are ours; the lives that are lost every year in the name of the sanctity of life are alsoours. Why are the lives of unborn children more precious than the lives of their 13-year-old mothers? InChile, in July, former President Sebastian Pinera praised a pregnant 11-year-old victim of rape who saidshe was planning to have her baby. He called her deep and mature.

Birth control is a safer, less controversial topic, or it ought to be. Latin America and the Caribbean havethe second highest pregnancy rate among adolescents in the world. Not surprisingly, among the mostcommon causes of death among adolescents in the region are early pregnancy and abortion, accordingto figures from UNICEF.

These are not the times to remain neutral or quiet. Pope Francis is right, let’s not obsess over topics likeabortion or birth control. But let’s be vigilant and let’s be proactive. The governments in Latin Americanand the Caribbean ought to follow Pope Francis’ lead on thinking about the poor and the weak first,especially if the poor and the weak are adolescent girls who don’t want to become mothers just yet.

“It is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life,” the pope recently wrote.“On the other hand, it is also true that we have done little to adequately accompany women in verydifficult situations.” He specifically pointed to rape or extreme poverty as examples of those difficultsituations, all too typical in the region.

Let’s grab that other hand, the one Pope Francis is extending. It’s a start.

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William Read · Top Commenter · Durham

International Planned Parenthood Federation - the lobby group for the abortion industry.

Reply · Like · December 22 at 10:53am

Jane Roberts · Co-founder at 34 Million Friends

Of the 40 million abortions in the world every year, 20 million are illegal, unsafe, causing tens of thousands of deaths and millions of requiring post abortion care. When the world takes care of women, women take care of the world. Unfortunately the Catholic Church is complicit, and or often the driving force behindthese draconian laws. Such misery! Gender inequality (as exemplified in the Catholic Church) is the root cause of women not having access to family planning and to laws againstabortion which has existed ever since human beings evolved the intelligence to know that it was possible.

Reply · · Like · December 23 at 9:34am2

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