Ecuador’s Constitutional Court approves abortion for rape in landmark ruling

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Constitutional Court of Ecuador decriminalized abortion in cases of rape on Wednesday, a historic ruling that coincides with the entry into the presidency of the center-right Guillermo Lasso, an open anti-abortionist who has assured that he will respect the judicial decision.

The Plenary approved the resolution of the Court with seven votes in favor and the reservations of two magistrates, in an opinion that declared unconstitutional two clauses of the Integral Penal Code (COIP) and opened the possibility of voluntary interruption of pregnancy in those cases in which rape is proven.

This is a historic decision because, in Ecuador, abortion is still penalized with imprisonment, except when a doctor performs it to save the life of a pregnant woman or, until now, in the case of rape of a mentally disabled woman.

RIGHT TO HEALTH

In this way, the magistrates ordered to delete the words “person with mental disability” from numeral 2 of article 150 of the COIP. The possibility of abortion for rape is open to all pregnant women.

The ruling also solves one of the most pressing problems in Ecuadorian society: the rape of girls and adolescents.

“This is for the 2,000 girls who give birth every year as a result of rape because a pregnant girl is a raped girl. It is for the approximately seven girls who every day have to give birth in precarious conditions,” a young Ecuadorian woman who was demonstrating at the doors of the Court told Efe.

Without giving her name, and with a sign that read “Girls, not mothers”, the young woman insisted that the ruling exempts from “criminalization” all those women and girls who have defended their right to health, “to have an abortion in safe conditions”, given that many are forced to do so in illegal clinics.

AN INCOMPLETE RULING

“Now we have to get the health system to make it operational, and continue working to decriminalize abortion (completely),” said Virginia Gomez, director of the foundation Desafio, which is part of the National Coalition of Women of Ecuador, responsible for the appeal of unconstitutionality processed on Wednesday.

Even so, they consider that the court has fallen short with respect to their petitions, which also included decriminalization in cases of incest, rape, non-consensual insemination, or fetal malformation.

“It is a historical struggle that women in the country are going through,” said Gómez, with dozens of demonstrators behind her from groups in favor and against, concentrated at the doors of the Court while the judges were deciding.

For its part, the National Coalition of Women considered in a communiqué that it is “a necessary advance, although incomplete” and assured that “Ecuadorian women would continue to fight to exercise their right to be free to enjoy, defend and protect their bodies and integral health”.

PRESIDENT-ELECT COMPLIES WITH THE SENTENCE

The demonstrators against decriminalization, self-identified as “pro-life” groups, maintained in their proclamations that “abortion is not a right” but “a death sentence for innocent children”.

With flags of Ecuador, they shouted “No to abortion, Yes to life”, “In Christ there is life” and that “one crime should not be solved with another”, in line with a letter that the president of the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference (CEE), Monsignor Luis Cabrera, had sent on Monday to the president of the Constitutional Court.

In the middle of this dispute, which Ecuadorian society has been dragging for years, has been President-elect Guillermo Lasso, a known anti-abortionist who expressed his opposition to abortion during the electoral campaign as a “Catholic”.

This Wednesday, in a statement after the ruling, he specified that it is an opinion “according to the values dictated by his faith”, but that as president-elect, he maintains his “unwavering respect for democratic and republican values”, especially regarding “the secularity of the State and the separation of powers”.

“For this reason, I want to express my total respect for the Court’s ruling, and I anticipate that it will also be respected by all the officials of my future government,” he wrote.