"Women Are Forced to Risk Their Lives and Health"

As we here in the USA get ready for yet another debate on abortion rights in the upcoming confirmation hearings for Bush’s pick for the Supreme Court, in Colombia, women can be imprisoned for up to four and a half years for having abortions even in cases of rape or when their lives are at risk.

“Women should be not sent to prison for having abortions,” said Marianne Mollmann, Women's Rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Colombia’s restrictive abortion laws violate women’s basic human rights and should be repealed.”

On April 14, Colombian lawyer Mónica del Pilar Roa López, project director at Women’s Link Worldwide, requested the court to review the country’s law on abortion and declare it unconstitutional. Roa’s office was broken into on June 16 and two computers as well as confidential files were stolen. Human Rights Watch is concerned for the safety of all personnel working on this case.

An estimated 450,000 abortions occur every year in Colombia. Recent studies indicate that a higher proportion of adolescent girls than adult women undergo illegal abortions.

Roa says, “Abortion in Colombia is illegal under every circumstance. Colombia's abortion law stipulates that both the woman who has the abortion and the abortion provider can be sentenced to up to three years in prison.” She says that while women do not go to jail for this reason very often, “Women are forced to risk their lives and health by getting unsafe abortions. This is how abortion is the third leading cause of maternal mortality in Colombia, which is unacceptable given that unsafe abortion is the only cause of maternal mortality that can be prevented.”

''It's like a double standard,'' said Mónica Roa, ``If the rich had to have clandestine abortions, this would have changed long ago. The rich don't have to worry about it because the poor are the ones who die.''

Women across Colombia are not only filing court actions they are marching in the streets to legalize abortion. And, says the Miami Herald, the response so far has been surprisingly positive.

Maybe that support should not be surprising at all. Ironically, a recent study by the World Economic Forum put Colombian women ahead of Switzerland and Italy in terms of equality with men. They hold high political posts and executive positions and also serve as commanders in a guerrilla force that has been fighting the government for more than four decades.

Last week, several women's organizations held a march. ''Sex when I want it; pregnancy when I decide,'' the marchers clad in black T-shirts chanted in front of the Constitutional Court. The night before, women spray-painted messages like, ''If men had abortions, it would it be a commandment,'' and plastered stickers around the city with similar messages.

The suit to change the law itself is really a pretty tame one that would require abortion be legal for women who were raped or whose life is in danger. Abortion rights advocates see it as a first step.

The Catholic Church, however, thinks even that is too much. ''The Church is worried,'' Monsignor Fabián Marulanda, the Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference, the church's governing body there says in the Herald. ``If there's no clear legislation about this, any woman can simply say they were [raped] and then abort.''

Last month reports the Herald, authorities in the northeastern city of Pamplona arrested two teenage girls after they sought medical treatment for complications during abortion procedures. Both students were charged with obtaining illegal abortions and later expelled from their university. In Bogotá, judges sentenced two more women for the same crime after they suffered bad reactions to abortion pills and were rushed to the hospital.

Still, the counter-response has been just as swift. In Pamplona, the local media reported that 135 professors from 13 universities had signed a letter protesting the arrests of the two girls and their expulsion. And in Bogotá, marchers challenged those who might question their rights.

I remember when abortion was not legal here in the US. I remember the women’s movement fight to make it legal. Hopefully, we won’t have to go through that again, but if we do, then so be it! Sources: Miami Herald, Human Rights Watch, Women’s Human Rights Net