Women's rights groups lead fight to overturn Latin America's abortion laws

In the staunchly Roman Catholic town of Pamplona in Colombia, two young women did what many here consider unthinkable: pregnant and scared, they took a cheap ulcer medication known to induce abortions. When the drug left them bleeding, they were treated at a local emergency room - then promptly arrested.

Insisting that abortion was rare, Pamplona's conservative leaders thought the case was over. Instead, the episode, in April, reverberated throughout Colombia and helped galvanise a national movement to roll back laws that make abortion illegal, even to save a mother's life.

Latin America holds some of the world's most stringent abortion laws, yet it still has the developing world's highest rate of abortions - a rate that is far higher even than in Western Europe, where abortion is widely and legally available.

.......

"There is a real trend for change, particularly in South America," said Marianne Mollman, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, which supports efforts to decriminalise abortion in Latin America. "I think it's the end of the realisation that the criminalisation of abortion doesn't lead to less abortion, but that it leads to a lot of preventable problems."


http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=2348942005

Abortion is an educational issue not a criminal issue.

Too bad W and Laura wish to make it a criminal issue.

If anyone from this group tries to visit the US, just watch the incumbent mal-administration reject their visa application...but not (officially) for political reasons.