Abortion

Latin America lags behind in obstetric justice

January 30, 2019

Whenever reports of misogyny hit the front page, it is likely that readers first think of discrimination in the workplace or, in its form that yields the most tragic results, femicide.  Of course, Latin America is far from absent of femicide; Guatemala is the country with the third highest rate of femicide on the planet. Between 2014 and 2016, there were 2,264 violent deaths of women in the country, and of those, 611 cases were reported as femicide (Johnson 2018).

The Fight to Decriminalize Abortion in Brazil

August 7, 2018

Debora Diniz is widely known in her homeland of Brazil as an activist, anthropologist, writer, filmmaker, law professor, and a co-founder of ANIS: Institute of Bioethics, an organization dedicated to bioethics and human rights in Latin America. In addition to her impressive career as a professor and lawyer, Diniz has worked on Brazilian Supreme Court cases involving abortion, marriage equality, the secular state, and stem cell research.

Argentina’s Feminist Momentum: A Journey to Legal, Safe Abortion Laws

July 9, 2018

Argentina has drawn widespread attention in the past couple of weeks as the Argentinian Congress took it’s first step towards legalizing abortion for women up to 14 weeks. On June 14th, the bill officially passed the House by 129 to 125 votes after a 23-hour strenuous debate (Politi and Ellis). If the Senate approves the abortion bill in the next hurdle for women’s rights, then President Macri has agreed to sign the law into effect.

Release of one of "Las 17" intensifies abortion debate in El Salvador

April 3, 2018

In 1997, El Salvador’s Congress made a motion to criminalise abortion, with legislators finalizing their decision without opening the case for public debate or consulting any medical professionals.  The campaign was headed by a number of anti-choice groups backed by the Catholic church, and the opposition, which took the form of a few women’s rights activists, was literally silenced when their microphones were disconnected during the trial (Lakhani 2017).

Possible Change to Abortion Laws in Argentina

March 20, 2018

As a majority Catholic country, abortion in Argentina has always been a sensitive topic. Illegal except for in a few cases, the Human Rights Watch estimates that nearly 500,000 abortions occur in Argentina annually, constituting about 40 percent of all pregnancies. It is also the leading cause of maternal mortality in the country (Human Rights Watch, 2018).

El Salvadorian Women Imprisoned for Miscarriages

October 13, 2017

Six countries in the world have bans on abortion under all circumstances, four of those are in Latin America. Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic have the strictest abortion laws in the world even prohibiting abortion to save a woman’s life. El Salvador has prosecuted 150 women for abortion with 49 women being convicted and 26 charged with homicide. Legally, doctors must report any woman that they suspect has had an abortion and women could face anywhere from two to eight years in prison.

Abortion in Latin America: Definitely Not Pro-Choice, but Certainly Not Pro-Life

October 12, 2016

Hundreds of women sit behind bars in El Salvador punished for defying the ban on abortion. Many, such as María Teresa Rivera are pleading they are wrongly jailed for having suffered miscarriages or stillbirths. Three years ago Rivera miscarried and awoke handcuffed to her hospital bed surrounded by seven policemen who proceeded to charge her with murder.1 After an eight-month trial, she was sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated murder.

The Strange Case of Cuba's Low Birth Rate

April 26, 2016

In most countries labeled as “developing country,” it is typical for birthrates to be extremely high, while health and education levels are low. But Cuba is an exception to the developing country rule: ever since the Castro Revolution in 1959, even with the label of “developing country,” Cuba has had extremely high levels of education and a world renowned health care system. Another aspect in which Cuba remains an outlier is their birthrate.

El Salvador Suggests Women Avoid Pregnancy Until 2018: A Women’s Rights Offense

The government of El Salvador has released a suggestion for women to delay becoming pregnant until 2018 due to the outbreak of the Zika virus. El Salvador is one of several countries (including Jamaica, Colombia, and Ecuador) to make such a suggestion but theirs is the most contradictory of them all considering their extremely strict anti-abortion laws and hard-to-access forms of contraception.

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