Abortion Under Siege in Latin America

Source: time

Abortion Under Siege in Latin America

By JEAN FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY/LA PAZ Sat Aug 11, 2:10 AM ET

The remarkable comeback by leftist political parties in Latin America in recent years has been accompanied by moves to roll back the region's abortion laws, widely considered some of the world's most restrictive. Mexico City's leftist-dominated legislature legalized first-trimester abortions earlier this year, while Chile's socialist President, Michele Bachelet, allows government-run hospitals to dispense the "morning-after" emergency contraception pill.


Elsewhere, however, it might seem as if a paradox was being played out: Instead of benefiting from the advance of the left, pro-choice advocates appear to be facing more setbacks. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, whose Sandinista Front was once an icon of the hemispheric left, backed a 2006 law that outlaws all abortions, even where a doctor would recommend the procedure to save a mother's life. In Venezuela - led by the self-styled commandante of "21st-century socialism," President Hugo Chavez - efforts to decriminalize abortion have stalled. And, perhaps as early as this fall, Bolivia's new constitution, which is being drafted largely by those aligned with Chavez's ally, President Evo Morales, may well proclaim "the right to life from the moment of conception," rendering all abortions illegal without exception. (Abortion in the case of rape or to save a mother's life has been legal in Bolivia since 1973.) Far from advancing abortion rights, "the goal right now," says Paul Bustillos, political director for Catholics For the Right to Choose (CDD) in Bolivia, "is just to maintain the status quo."

"Status quo" was hardly the promise of a political movement that has put the screws on multinational energy corporations, shifted billions of dollars to social projects for the poor and, especially in Chavez's case, hurled a stream of anti-imperialist epithets at the U.S. With firebrands like Chavez and Morales in power, some were hoping for a continental breakthrough on reproductive rights. Yet while positions on abortion rights have been a clear marker between left and right on the U.S. political spectrum, the situation is quite different in Latin America, where the left declines, for various national, cultural and religious reasons, to make "the revolution" pro-choice.

Bolivia is a case in point. As many as 80,000 abortions are performed each year in a country of less than 9 million people, giving it one of the world's highest abortion rates - but most abortions are clandestine, especially among poorer women who can't afford the $150 fee to undergo the safe, no-questions-asked abortions available through some medical facilities. Such underground procedures are the third leading cause of maternal mortality in the country. Yet there is no record of any doctors or patients involved being prosecuted. "I was all alone," says one Bolivian woman who paid about $50 for a back-alley abortion a few years ago. The abortionist "numbed that part of my body and then he did something to make it come out of me right there into the toilet."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20070811/wl_time/abortionundersiegeinlatinamerica;_ylt=As7ROmdWIXfhNNFULjdIdnWs0NUE

emigrating illegally to the U.S. Abortion and birth control were both outlawed in those countries several years ago. Now, they're over-populated for how many jobs are available. So, people are leaving to come where the jobs ARE.

And we get to ride this rocket of unsustainable population growth all the way to oblivion. All of us humans, no matter where we live. Meanwhile, some age-spotted clerics in a stone cathedral who have suppressed their sex drive for decades tells us what a proper sex life is. Glad your prayers will get you to heaven, oh holy one.

And although not as bad as with the abortion situation, the left in Latin America has not been very good in pushing for equal rights for gays and lesbians either. Sure, they have been better than the right, but that doesn't mean it is good enough, or even decent.

In general, Latin American societies tend to be pretty conservative in social issues, and the left is no exception.

and that's in country and out.

Msongs
www.msongs.com

The universal health care includes excellent sex education and full reproductive freedom. The health of the people is obvious with a look around on a Cuban street. No young, poor women with 2 or 3 little ones in tow. Cuba is also coming around on GLTB issues.

If he hadn't bogged down the once-mighty American military machine in Iraq, he would have troops to spare to keep the Latin American natives in line.

I will also say that despite the Vatican's best efforts to stamp out Liberation Theology, the idea that the oppressed must have economic justice by challenging the elites, rather than by praying to Jesus, has taken hold. Thanks to Hugo Chavez and others, people are beginning to realize that they have the power to change things.

Viva Chavez!