Last-Minute Pleas for Abortion Reform in El Salvador.
| Autor | Witte-Lebhar, Benjamin |
If there was ever a time for El Salvador to scale back its two-decade-old blanket ban on abortion, it is now--before lawmakers chosen in the midterm elections in March take their seats in the unicameral legislative assembly, the Asamblea Legislativa (AL).
That was the message former AL president Lorena Pena--the highest-ranking deputy with the governing Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, FMLN)--made loud and clear in a radio interview on March 12, a week after her party lost significant ground to the hard-right opposition party Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Republican Alliance, ARENA) in nationwide municipal and parliamentary elections (NotiCen, March 15, 2018).
"It's urgent that abortion be decriminalized in four circumstances before the new legislature comes in, because ARENA doesn't have the right to force women to die, to not be able to save their lives," she said in reference to an FMLN-backed bill, submitted in October 2016, that would allow doctors to terminate pregnancies that result from sexual assault or statutory rape, put the mother's life at risk, or involve a non-viable fetus.
"The legislature hasn't approved the changes yet, because the other parties haven't agreed to offer their votes, but they've got six weeks, more or less, to correct their ways and put themselves on the side of Salvadoran women," Pena added during her appearance on the radio program Pencho & Aida.
The "other parties" she mentioned include the center-right Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Grand Alliance for National Unity, GANA) and Partido de Concertacion Nacional (National Coalition Party, PCN), which currently have 17 of the AL's 84 seats between them. ARENA has the largest legislative bloc, with 35 deputies, followed by the FMLN, which has 31 but controls the presidency under Salvador Sanchez Ceren, elected in 2014.
Come May 1, however, the balance of power in the legislature will shift significantly. ARENA will have 37 seats--six shy of a simple majority (43)--while the FMLN will be left with just 23. GANA will have 11 deputies, followed by the PCN with eight, and Partido Democrata Cristiano (Christian Democratic Party, PDC) with three. The AL's final two seats will be held by Juan Jose Martel of the center-left Cambio Democratico (Democratic Change, CD) and Leonardo Bonilla, an independent.
In the new legislature, "it'll be more difficult to decriminalize abortion...
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