PERU: THREATS TO SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS.
By Elsa Chanduvi Jana
For more than two months, a heated debate has been waged in Peru regarding a woman's right to freely make decisions regarding her sexuality and her reproductive life.
The debate began in early October, when the congressional penal-code-revisory committee (Comision Especial Revisora del Codigo Penal)--created in 2006 and made up of legislators, representatives from the Ministerio de Justicia, the Colegio de Abogados, the Defensoria del Pueblo, and universities--approved the decriminalization of abortion when the fetus has severe physical or mental defects, in the case of rape, or when artificial insemination has occurred without the woman's consent. The last two instances require a legal complaint to have been filed.
Those instances in which abortion would no longer be illegal would be in addition to therapeutic abortion--termination of a pregnancy for preventive and/or curative reasons when the life or health of the mother is at risk--which has been legal in Peru since 1924.
The Oct. 6 decision was supported by women's rights organizations but set off an outcry from the Catholic Church and exposed strong differences within the Cabinet.
Ten days later, on Oct. 18, the Tribunal Constitucional (TC) added more fuel to the fire when it banned the Ministerio de Salud's free distribution of the morning-after pill, saying it had not been shown that the pill was not abortive.
Conflicting opinions
The congressional changes to the Codigo Penal are "an important step," since thousands of women in Peru are forced to resort to a clandestine abortion, putting their lives at risk because of the unsanitary conditions in which such procedures are carried out, Gina Yanez, director of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Movimiento Manuela Ramos, told La Republica newspaper.
The NGO Estudio para la Defensa y los Derechos de la Mujer (DEMUS) says that 352,000 clandestine abortions are performed each year in Peru, and, what is worse, this practice is the third-leading cause of maternal death.
The DEMUS report, Clandestine Abortion in Peru (El aborto clandestino en el Peru), by anthropologist Delicia Fernandez, says that, for each hospital abortion, seven are performed outside a hospital, putting the life of the mother at serious risk. Fernandez says that, although abortion is illegal, "induced abortion is used frequently in the country as an extreme means of ending unwanted pregnancies."
Statements to La Republica showed enormous...
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