The right to abortion reaches the draft of the new Chilean Constitution

Santiago, Chile, March 15, the Plenary Session of the Constitutional Convention of Chile approved an article on sexual rights and reproductive legislation defining abortion on Tuesday, drawing up a final text that would be a referendum this year. “Everyone has sexual and reproductive rights, including, among other things, the right to decide freely, independently and informly about sex, reproduction, satisfaction and contraception.” The second paragraph of the article states that “special attention should be paid to gender, inclusiveness and cultural significance and to ensure the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights without discrimination (...) Endurance of all women and individuals, the state of pregnancy, voluntary termination of pregnancy, childbirth and voluntary and protected motherhood.” “We were tasked after the painful abandonment of the Congress of the Republic, which did not take into account the necessary measures that our country would take to establish fundamental rights. Today we break the cycle of exclusion and discrimination in the history of the Constitution. “We had to wait 200 years,” said Barbara Sepulveda, an existing member of the Communist Party. This is a historic vote expected by thousands in South American countries, and a scene of a strong wave of feminists who have played a leading role in the country in recent years, including the day of repeated protests in all cities at the end of 2019. Legal abortion is a historical requirement for feminist groups of Latin America, where only four states are criminalized: Argentina, Colombia (up to 24 states), Cuba, Uruguay, Guyana and Mexico. Various studies have shown that by 2017, almost 70,000 abortions were conducted in Chile every year, all of them are hidden. According to the Ministry of Health, 1827 legal abortions were registered in Chile between 2018 and 2020, indicating that tens of thousands of women are still getting pregnant illegally.