Colombia’s Highest Court Decriminalizes Abortion

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Having an abortion is now not against the law below Colombian legislation, the nation’s high court docket dominated on Monday, in a call that paves the best way for the process to turn into broadly accessible throughout this traditionally conservative, Catholic nation.

The ruling by Colombia’s Constitutional Court follows years of organizing by ladies throughout Latin America for better protections and extra rights, together with entry to abortion, and vital shifts within the area’s authorized panorama.

Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in the same choice in September and Argentina’s Congress legalized the process in late 2020. Colombia’s choice implies that three of the 4 most populous nations in Latin America have now opened the door to extra widespread entry to abortion.

It additionally comes because the United States has been shifting in the other way, with abortion restrictions multiplying throughout the nation, and the U.S. Supreme Court contemplating a case that would overrule Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional proper to abortion

“This puts Colombia on the vanguard in Latin America,” stated Mariana Ardila, a Colombian lawyer with Women’s Link Worldwide, a part of the coalition that introduced one among two circumstances difficult the criminalization of abortion. “This is historic.”

The court docket’s choice decriminalizes abortions within the first 24 weeks of being pregnant, and implies that any lady ought to have the ability to search the process from a well being skilled with out worry of legal prosecution. It additionally units the stage for the Colombian authorities to manage 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 girls’s rights and abortion entry gained prominence somewhat greater than a yr in the past when Argentina grew to become the most important nation in Latin America to legalize abortion.

Soon, abortion rights supporters throughout the area, from Mexico to Paraguay, Brazil to Colombia, have been carrying or brandishing inexperienced handkerchiefs — the image of Argentina’s abortion rights motion — to point out their solidarity with ladies’s sexual and reproductive rights. The handkerchiefs grew to become symbols of the work that ladies’s rights legal professionals and activists had been doing extra quietly for years.

The Argentina choice reverberated throughout Latin America, displaying that it was doable to legalize abortion in nations with robust Catholic and evangelical Protestant beliefs and a historical past of patriarchal beliefs.

In September, Mexico’s Supreme Court dominated that it was unconstitutional to make abortion against the law, serving to to clear the best way for the legalization of the process within the nation of about 130 million folks.

The Constitutional Court magistrates in Colombia thought of over the previous few months two petitions that challenged the portion of the penal code that made abortion against the law.

In one, a lawyer named Andrés Mateo Sánchez Molina stated the measure violated rights protected by the Constitution, together with the best to human dignity, freedom and equality.

In one other, introduced by Causa Justa, a coalition of abortion rights teams, legal professionals argued that criminalization had forged abortion in such a adverse mild that it prevented even ladies with a authorized proper to an abortion from getting one.

In some circumstances, the coalition stated, the existence of the legal penalty led well being professionals to disclaim the process to ladies who certified for it. In others, ladies prevented searching for abortions in authorized well being facilities out of worry they’d be jailed, as a substitute searching for dangerous alternate options in underground clinics.

“These barriers affect mainly women living in rural and remote areas, low-income women, adolescent girls, women and girls living in situations of armed conflict and victims of gender violence, including physical 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 due to this fact unconstitutional.

Ultimately, the court docket determined to listen to the Causa Justa case first. The second case will likely be heard at a later date, however the first choice can’t be reversed.

Hundreds of abortion rights supporters and dozens of their opponents stood outdoors the courthouse in Bogotá awaiting a call on Monday afternoon.

In latest 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 difficulty.

Women within the crowd danced with inexperienced handkerchiefs over their head because the information moved by the gang, prompting Jonathan Silva, 32, to stroll away angrily. An evangelical Christian who works for Unidos Por La Vida, an anti-abortion group, Mr. Silva stated the court docket had overstepped its energy and it was a call that must be made by elected officers.

“What they’re decriminalizing is the killing of human beings,” he stated.

Until now, abortions had been authorized solely in restricted circumstances, laid out by a 2006 Constitutional Court choice: when a lady’s well being was in danger, when a fetus had critical well being issues or when a being pregnant resulted from rape. Anyone else who had an abortion — or who helped a lady receive one — could possibly be sentenced to 16 to 54 months in jail.

Abortion rights activists usually stated that this authorized panorama created a two-tier system: Wealthier ladies in cities may get an abortion as a result of they knew how you can use one of many exceptions specified by the legislation, whereas poorer ladies with much less schooling had restricted data or means to take action.

Prosecutors in Colombia open about 400 circumstances annually towards ladies who’ve abortions or individuals who assist them, in accordance with the lawyer basic’s workplace. At least 346 folks have been convicted in such circumstances since 2006.

Nearly all of those abortion-related investigations have been in rural areas, involving ladies as younger as 11, in accordance with researchers with Causa Justa.

Illegal abortions could be unsafe and trigger about 70 deaths a yr in Colombia, in accordance with the nation’s well being ministry.

A latest survey by the nonpartisan agency Ipsos discovered that whereas 82 % of Colombian respondents supported abortion in some circumstances, simply 26 % supported it in all circumstances — and the court docket’s choice is prone to trigger friction as abortion rights activists, policymakers, well being care suppliers and others decide the way it must be carried out.

The choice can’t be altered by different authorized our bodies.

Colombia’s Constitutional Court is taken into account by many authorized specialists to be extra liberal than the nation at massive, and lots of latest 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 of a authorized trendsetter within the area, stated Francisco Bernate, a legislation professor on the University of Rosario in Bogotá, and the choice is prone to entice the eye of judges throughout Latin America.

Activists within the United States are additionally following the modifications within the area.

“These struggles are connected,” stated Serra Sippel, the chief world advocacy officer at Fos Feminista, an alliance of reproductive rights teams that works all over the world, together with within the United States. “We in the U.S. can really learn a lot.”

Sofía Villamil and Megan Janetsky contributed reporting from Bogotá.