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Abortion in Latin America

This article, from Time, is an excellent short review of abortion conditions in Central and South America, in the context of Uruguay's modest attempts to liberalize its abortion laws and the recent difficulty of an Argentinian woman to obtain a legal abortion after being raped.

When it comes to abortion, contraception, and family planning, Central and South American countries are a bundle of sorry contradictions. While strongly Roman Catholic in culture, this region has very high abortion rates compared to the U.S. and Western Europe and high numbers of unsafe abortions. Would this be, in part, because of cultural and socioeconomic conditions that make effective use of contraception difficult?

Those that support total bans on abortion-- like American House member Joe Walsh-- should consider the experience of women in the countries that have 'no exceptions' laws: "El Salvador, Nicaragua,  Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Chile." El Salvador perhaps goes the farthest, as the women there who have abortions are themselves declared criminals and jailed. This is odd, legally speaking, even for restrictive abortion regimes. Those-- again, like Representative Walsh-- should consider the stories of women who have not received necessary medical care because doctors in these countries were wary of being punished if they gave medical care to a pregnant woman who needed it, for fear of being prosecuted.

Links:


Time article (October 19, 2012): Uruguay Diverges from a Continent Where Abortion Is Worse than Rape

Article from the Washington Post that explains Uruguay's political culture and how it helps to explain the how and why of its liberalization of abortion law (October 21, 2012): Legalizing abortion the Uruguayan way: through painful compromises and concessions

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