Women's groups in Latin America and the Caribbean urge decriminalization of abortion

Demonstrators call for women's rights in Chile. Restrictive laws across the region deny women their rights to life and health by limiting access to life-saving health care, including safe abortion.

Ipas joins women's groups across Latin America and the Caribbean today in affirming women's rights to reproductive health and freedom and calling for the reform of abortion laws that not only restrict those rights but often cost women their lives.

Since 1990, Latin American women's and feminist groups have observed September 28 as an annual Day of Decriminalization of Abortion. This year's campaign is built around the theme, "Women decide, societies respect and governments guarantee."

"It is in families', societies' and governments' best interests to empower women to make their own choices about reproduction - including when and whether to have children - without having to risk their lives," said M. Virginia Chambers, Ipas's Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. "Laws restricting Latin American women's access to safe abortion contribute to thousands of preventable deaths and countless related injuries each year. By decriminalizing abortion, we can save the lives of many women and girls."

In Latin America and the Caribbean, as many as 95% of all abortions are performed illegally. Unsafe abortion is more prevalent there than in any other region in the world, accounting for 21% of all pregnancy-related deaths of women.

Campaign-related activities planned by Ipas and others this year focus on conservative political and religious forces that threaten women's reproductive health and freedom. For example:

• Ipas Central America and other women's groups in Nicaragua will convene a meeting to develop a national strategy to resist efforts to revise the abortion section of the country's penal code. With support from CLADEM, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights, the campaign will likely include sending letters and making public declarations opposing such a revision to Parliament and the media. Throughout the month of September, Ipas Central America coordinated several local preparatory meetings, including one for youth in Managua.
• Events in Mexico on September 28 will include presentations, roundtable discussions, celebrations and publicity campaigns emphasizing the campaign's themes. Among the events in which Ipas Mexico will participate is a symposium hosted by the National Alliance for the Right to Decide (andar) and the Colegio de México, one of the country's leading universities, on securing women's access to safe abortion in Mexico.

This year's Day of Decriminalization of Abortion follows closely on the heels of a recent global meeting to assess progress made on reproductive health and rights goals set at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). Final documents from the meeting, which was attended by representatives from more than 100 countries, recommend that governments go beyond the ICPD consensus by making safe, legal abortion accessible and available to all women, "free from the threat of violence or coercion."

Experience in the Latin American and Caribbean region illustrates the critical importance of this recommendation. Some of the world's most restrictive abortion laws are found in this region; for example, Chile and El Salvador are the only two countries in the world where abortion is not permitted under any circumstances, even to save the life of the woman. Rather than reducing the incidence of abortion, such restrictions only ensure that abortions that do occur will be unsafe - that is, provided in unregulated, often unhygienic conditions by unqualified personnel.

The Day of Decriminalization of Abortion, which was created in 1990 at the 5th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting, provides an opportunity to highlight this problem of unsafe abortion and generate discussion and debate around the reform of abortion laws on the national, regional and international level. Also known as the September 28th campaign, the day coincides with the commemoration of the abolition of slavery in Brazil and serves as a reminder that freedom will not be fully realized until women are able to exercise control over their own sexual and reproductive lives.

The Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristán (the Flora Tristán Peruvian Women's Center) is spearheading the September 28th campaign from 2003 through 2005. Since its inception in 1990, the campaign has been organized by various women's groups including Catholics for Free Choice in Uruguay, the Reproductive Choice Information Group in Mexico, Bolivia's Women's Information and Development Center, and Rede Feminista de Saude (the Brazilian Feminist Network for Health and Reproductive Rights). Many of these organizations are planning campaign events this year as well.

This September 28^th, Ipas joined Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), Family Care International (FCI), the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region in signing a statement of solidarity titled “Statement by U.S.-Based NGO’s Concerned with Women’s Health and Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean."

For more information, contact:
Kirsten Sherk
Senior Associate, Media Relations
e-mail: sherkk@ipas.org
phone: 919.960.5612
fax: 919.929.0258