Argentina, Mexico, Colombia… More than a year ago, iFamNews wrote about a domino effect regarding abortion regulations in Latin American countries and recounted the situation in Chile, where in January 2021 the Commission for Women and Gender Equality of the Chamber of Deputies “initiated the procedure that will lead to the discussion and vote on a bill presented by the opposition and aimed at legalizing abortion within the fourteenth week of gestation”.
Previously, the country had “the law passed in 2017, which allows voluntary termination of pregnancy in case of danger to the life of the mother, ‘incompatibility with life’ of the fetus or rape.”
“Once the measure is approved,” it added, “the president of the committee, Maite Orsini Pascal, will be able to send it to the House, where the parties that make up the center-right coalition that supports the government of President Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera promise battle.” In November, the bill aimed at expanding the range of access to voluntary termination of pregnancy was rejected by Congress, and the situation has not changed.
Next, December presidential elections were won by leftist candidate Gabriel Boric, who takes office this month, in the final phase of the project of elaboration of the new text of the Chilean National Constitution. And here the issue of abortion pops up again in Chile, where “a week after thousands of women marched through the streets of Santiago on International Women’s Day, Chile’s Constituent Assembly voted to include reproductive rights, including ‘voluntary termination of pregnancy,’ in the draft of the Constitution.”
So-called “women’s reproductive rights” should therefore become part of the Chilean Constitution, riding on the usual pietistic stereotype of female self-determination. Chile would be the first Latin American country in which the “right” to abortion would be enshrined in the Constitution, if the new text is approved in the referendum scheduled for later this year.
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