A bill to legalize abortion in Uruguay, having passed the Senate in December 2011, remains stalled in the Chamber of Deputies. Earlier this year, the Frente Amplio (Broad Front—FA) coalition, which controls congress and the presidency, was one vote away from agreeing to the Senate bill that would decriminalize abortion within the first 12 weeks after conception.
The deciding vote, from opposition Deputy Iván Posada in the Partido Independiente (Independent Party), offered up a compromise proposal in April that would permit abortion only after a pregnant woman submits to a counseling committee made up of a psychologist, a social worker and a “conscientious objector,” also known as an anti-abortion activist. The woman would then be given five days to decide whether to move forward with the abortion, and allowed to undergo a legal abortion procedure after that waiting period. The bill still remains on the floor in the Chamber of Deputies and Deputy Pedro Abdala of the Partido Nacionalista (Nationalist Party), the second-largest party in congress, favors sending the issue to a national referendum if the bill eventually passes in the Chamber.
In the absence of bill passage, Uruguayan pregnant women are turning to drugs like misoprostol. Obstetricians or gynecologists cannot prescribe misoprostol, although some still do illegally and the drug can be found on the black market. Misoprostol has a 97 percent success rate in terminating a pregnancy, but a 2001 survey shows that 30 percent of female deaths in Uruguay were attributed to illegal abortion measures.
The deadlock in Uruguay underscores Joan Caivano and Jane Marcus-Delgado’s argument in the latest issue of Americas Quarterly: “In Latin America and the Caribbean, 12 percent of all maternal deaths are estimated to have been the result of unsafe abortion. Annually, about 1 million women in the region are hospitalized for complications ranging from excessive blood loss and infection to septic shock arising from unsafe terminations of pregnancy. Despite these dire statistics, and their dramatic effect on women’s health, the efforts to address reproductive rights have been marked by divisive politics.” For more from Ms. Marcus-Delgado, she will be speaking at the Americas Quarterly Summer 2012 issue launch on August 17.
