Constitutional Court debates decriminalization of abortion in Colombia

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The magistrates of the Constitutional Court of Colombia addressed on Thursday (18) the debate on the decriminalization of abortion in a decision that must be voted on no later than Friday and that is decisive for women’s rights.

The Constitutional Court has in its hands many reasons in law, which are also powerful from the perspective of public health, from the perspective of the protection of women’s human rights,’ said to Efe the co-founder of the Mesa por la Vida, Ana Cristina Gonzalez, one of the pioneers of Causa Justa.

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This platform, which brings together almost a hundred feminist organizations, was the one that presented one of the two lawsuits that the magistrates are studying, and which argues, among other issues, that abortion deepens inequality between women and that ‘it has not been effective or fair and discriminatory’.

So far, abortion in Colombia is only permitted on three grounds: when the health or life of the mother is at risk, when it is the result of rape or incest or if there is malformation of the fetus, and in other cases it is punishable by up to four and a half years in prison.

These are ‘weighty and profound reasons that should lead the Court to make a favorable decision’, considers Gonzalez.

THE REASONS FOR DECRIMINALIZATION

In reality, the Court has two different lawsuits on the table that seek the same end: one presented by a private individual that is based, above all, on the fact that abortion is the only gender crime in the Penal Code because it is only applied to women and therefore violates the principle of equality before the law.

And then Causa Justa, which in addition to the argument of inequality among women -because 97% of the women denounced for having abortions are from rural areas, which is also where more complications are produced in the procedure-, also assures that the three grounds are not enough.

The barriers to abortion even in the stipulated cases have caused that legal abortions are only between 1 and 12% of those performed in the whole country (depending on the statistics used); ‘that means that women who have abortions do it outside those grounds, they do it in a clandestine way, probably unsafe’, alleges Gonzalez.

In addition to this other barrier, the other demand, which will be defended by magistrate Alberto Rojas, also delves into the fact that society has evolved so much that only three grounds are not enough to guarantee women’s rights.

Another of the reasons that the magistrates will have in the debate is that criminal law is used excessively when it comes to abortion, since since 2008 have not fallen below 400 complaints for this practice in Colombia, according to data from the Attorney General’s Office.

‘In Colombia the crime of abortion is condemned more than the crimes in which women are victims, I think that is a reason of great weight and a reason that hardly an instance such as the Court can ignore’, Gonzalez recalled.

According to Causa Justa, women in Colombia are sentenced seven times more for abortion than perpetrators of domestic violence and twice as much as perpetrators of sexual violence. In addition, non-consensual abortion, that is, abortion performed on a woman without her asking for it, is hardly investigated and less than 3% of the convictions for abortion are of this type.

WHAT COMES NEXT?

The vote must raise five votes in favor for it to go ahead, and so far, according to sources close to the process, there would be four supports and it would remain that some of the women magistrates would join.

If it is finally decriminalized, ‘of course it is a long road, but it is a less tortuous road’, explains Gonzalez. It would remain to be regulated because the Constitutional Court will most likely not decide the weeks in which a voluntary interruption of pregnancy can be practiced, but at least it will no longer be sanctioned.

This means that the more than 5,000 criminal cases currently open in the courts for abortion would be closed immediately and even the sentences of women who are in prison for this crime could be reviewed.