Latin America: thousands of women demand the right to abortion

Thousands of women have taken to the streets of Latin America to demand the right to abortion, a practice banned in most countries in the region and for which hundreds of women are serving prison sentences. From Mexico to Peru, via El Salvador, Chile and Colombia, the demonstrators, wearing the famous green headscarf symbolizing the fight for the legalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), brandished signs on which one could read “Legal abortion now” or “right to decide”.

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In El Salvador, legislation prohibits abortion in all circumstances and penalties can go up to eight years in prison. Seventeen women are currently incarcerated on charges of "aggravated homicide" after seeking treatment for an obstetrical emergency. In response, hundreds of Salvadoran women presented a bill allowing abortion under certain rather restrictive conditions.

In Mexico City, several dozen women demonstrated, a few weeks after the Supreme Court had declared the criminalization of abortion unconstitutional, expressing their indignation at the violence against women in their country: 672 feminicides were committed between January and August. , according to official figures.

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Around 205 women have been sentenced for having had an abortion in Colombia since 2005, according to a report by the collective La Mesa por la Vida y la Salud de las Mujeres. In the country, abortion is legal only in the event of malformation of the fetus, a mortal risk for the mother or following sexual abuse. Hundreds of women gathered outside the Congress in Bogota to demand an abortion free from these constraints.

“A state that does not grant the right to abortion is a femicide state,” read another placard held up by a group of young women demanding the right to abortion in Lima, Peru. A question that the new left-wing Peruvian president, Pedro Castillo, a conservative on social issues, immediately rejected during his recent electoral campaign.