Sometimes it does seem there’s a war over women’s bodies, and nowhere does this seem more dangerous than in the large number of regions where abortion is illegal, unsafe and life-threatening.
In the United States, anti-abortion forces have lately succeeded in their drive to chip away at a woman’s right to choose, as I write in my latest Female Factor column, but women in several regions of the world face bigger obstacles.
Much of Latin America, Africa and Asia – approximately 25 percent of the world’s population – have highly restrictive abortion laws. Few countries across the swath of southern continents, from Africa to Southeast Asia, have enacted abortion rights laws and measures to protect women’s reproductive health.
In deeply Roman Catholic and patriarchal Latin America, where anti-abortion church dogma and macho traditions predominate, abortion on demand is allowed nationally only in Cuba, Guyana, Puerto Rico and Uruguay (and in Mexico City, but not in the rest of Mexico).
Yet the region has the highest estimated rates of abortions in the world, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research and policy organization based in New York.
Some 4.4 million abortions were performed in Latin America in 2008, and 95 percent of those were unsafe, Guttmacher reported.
In most of those countries women seeking abortions go to midwives and other practitioners who use unsafe techniques, and some women perform abortions on themselves with drugs and other abortion-inducing methods. More than one thousand women in the region die and one million are hospitalized each year after undergoing backstreet abortions, according to the World Health Organization.
Such conditions came to the world’s attention recently with the case of a Salvadoran woman called “Beatriz,” who had lupus and kidney failure while pregnant with a 26-week-old baby who was missing parts of its brain and was certain to die once removed from the womb. Beatriz was doomed as well, likely to die giving birth.
With the mother’s life at risk and the unborn child certain to die, El Salvador’s Supreme Court decided to abide by Salvadoran law and ruled that Beatriz did not have a right to an abortion, not even to save her life.
But at the last minute a compromise was reached. Beatriz was allowed to have the child by Caesarean section. Since she was past 20 weeks of pregnancy, the procedure was considered an “induced birth,” not an abortion. The child was delivered and died within hours, but Beatriz survived.
“Over the last decade, throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been a clear offensive against the rights of women,’’ Erika Guevara, the director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Global Fund for Women, told me last week. “Anti-abortion laws, in particular, have been used as a way to attack women’s rights and diminish their political and social strength and influence.”
But, she said, “Things are slowly starting to change for the better.” In 2007, abortion was legalized in Mexico City, and in 2012, Uruguay approved legal abortions in all circumstances, though only during the first trimester of pregnancy.
“Progress comes with serious reservations,’’ she said in an email. In Uruguay, “women seeking abortion services are required to present their case before an interdisciplinary panel comprised of three professionals – a doctor, a psychologist and a social worker – and listen to advice about alternatives including adoption and support services. Women must then wait for five days to reflect on the consequences of their decision.”
The situation for women may be worse in parts of Africa.
“Unfortunately, in many places, such as Ethiopia and Tanzania, women are dying simply because they did not have access to safe abortion or contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancy,” Pamela W. Barnes, president and chief executive of EngenderHealth, a global women’s health nonprofit, said last week.
What she has seen on the ground in the 20 countries where EngenderHealth works has taught her that access to contraception and to abortions are critical to women’s health, she said.
“Maternal health can only be achieved if a woman can prevent an unwanted pregnancy in the first place through family planning and access to safe abortion,’’ she noted. “Millions of lives are at stake.”