Two Tragic Cases Throw a Harsh Spotlight on Latin America's Abortion Laws Gabriela Garcia Calderon Orbe - Global Voices
go to original May 16, 2015

Campaign for mothers-to-be (Flickr/Prefectura de la Provincia del Guayas)

Two cases of rape resulting in pregnancy thousands of miles apart have once again have put a face to a taboo topic in Latin America: abortion.

The first involves a Salvadoran woman who was pardoned after serving seven years of a 30-year sentence for aggravated homicide related to a stillborn birth. The second is a 10-year old girl in Paraguay who is pregnant after she was allegedly raped by her stepfather. Authorities have denied her an abortion.

Latin America has some of the most restrictive regulations on abortion in the world. El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Suriname and Chile ban it completely. Guatemala, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay allow it only when the mother's life is threatened. The only countries in the region where women are free to abort are Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico (but only in that nation's capital) and some countries in the Caribbean.

Salvadoran Carmen Guadalupe Vásquez Aldana was 18 years old when she experienced the events that landed her in prison, according to the campaign Las17. She was one of 17 women, known as #Las17, who were imprisoned for aggravated homicide of their newborns. Their defenders argue that the women lost their newborns due to a range complications beyond their control, and that authorities never pursued the truth and instead treated them as guilty from the start.

Read the rest at Global Voices

Related: Mexico to Paraguay: Let a 10-Year-Old Girl Have an Abortion (The Guardian)

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