Chile voters sour on right-wing constitution as abortion clause stirs debate

By Natalia A. Ramos Miranda, and Lucinda Elliott
October 6, 2023

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Voters are souring on Chile's second, conservative-led attempt at drafting a new constitution as a bid to further tighten the country's already restrictive abortion laws and other moves to the right threaten to turn off a majority of voters.

More than half of Chileans, 54% of respondents surveyed before the draft text was completed this week, plan on voting against the new constitution, according to pollster Cadem.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chile-voters-sour-right-wing-constitution-abortion-clause-stirs-debate-2023-10-06/


The new anti-abortion tactics of the far right in the Americas

ISABELLA COTASTEPHANIA CORPI
OCT 24, 2021

An EL PAÍS investigation in five Latin American countries has found that a network of centers affiliated with the far-right US organization Heartbeat International (HI) promote themselves online as feminist support groups and use misleading language in favor of abortion, but in reality they work to manipulate and institutionalize women to get them to carry their pregnancy to term.

Five female reporters and one male reporter went undercover to centers in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Mexico between 2019 and 2021, as a follow-up to an OpenDemocracy investigation into HI’s operations in the region.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2021-10-24/the-new-anti-abortion-tactics-of-the-far-right-in-the-americas.html


Letters to Pope Francis

FEATURE: Letters to Pope Francis
(three letters at the link, from the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion, Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir, and Catholics for Choice.)
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TO: His Holiness, Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City
c/o Vatican Press Office
av@pccs.va

14 November 2018

Dear Pope Francis,

We are writing to express our disappointment at two recent pronouncements you made related to abortion, which seemed to contradict statements you had made earlier in your Papacy.

After you became Pope, you made two important statements in relation to women and abortion. First, you said that the Church should stop its obsession with the subject of abortion, and spend more time on its primary roles. We found that very hopeful because we think abortion is a public health and human rights issue, not a religious one, and we hoped your statement was an expression of understanding of the reality of women’s lives. We knew that you would not reverse the formal position the Church has taken since the mid-19th century, but we read your statement as a possibility that you might ever so slowly take the Church in a different direction.

Continued: https://mailchi.mp/safeabortionwomensright/feature-letters-to-pope-francis-14-november-2018?e=372dd34034


Ipas’s Bia Galli attended Brazil’s historic Supreme Court hearing on abortion

Ipas’s Bia Galli attended Brazil’s historic Supreme Court hearing on abortion
In this Q&A, she shares why it was so important and what comes next

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

In an historic two-day hearing before Brazil’s Supreme Court last week, experts presented arguments and evidence regarding the question of whether abortion should be made legal up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. Currently abortion is a crime in Brazil—except after rape, if a woman’s life is in danger, or if the fetus has a fatal brain condition called anencephaly. As a result, thousands of women and girls each year resort to clandestine, often unsafe abortions that risk their health and lives.

Bia Galli, Ipas’s senior policy and advocacy consultant based in Brazil, attended the two-day hearing. Here she talks about its historic significance, the rise of the conservative opposition movement in Brazil, and what’s next for abortion rights advocates.

Continued: http://www.ipas.org/en/News/2018/August/Ipas-s-Bia-Galli-attended-Brazil-s-historic-Supreme-Court-hearing-on-abortion.aspx


FEATURE: Report from the Brazilian Abortion Frontline

FEATURE: Report from the Brazilian Abortion Frontline

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International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
13 December 2017
The turbulence in Brazil continues

by the Abortion Frontline Project, coordinated by Cfemea (Feminist Center for Studies and Advisory), Ipas Brazil and Sexuality Policy Watch

As the turbulence of Brazil's political climate and sexual politics overall continues, the abortion rights debates decidedly intensified in November 2017 (check here for updates in Portuguese). As reported by the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion on 24 November, Amendment No.181, a provision aimed at including right to life from conception into the Constitution, was approved by a Special Commission of the Chamber of Deputies on 8 November. Then, during the debate on the measure, new amendments to the provisional text were presented and were to be voted finally on 12 December. Congresswoman Erika Kokay, whose vote against the amendment was the only one, had proposed on the 8th to withdraw this "Trojan Horse" provision (the right to life from conception) because it was inserted into the text of what was supposed to be a bill for extending maternity leave for women who deliver prematurely.

Continued at source: http://mailchi.mp/safeabortionwomensright/feature-report-from-the-brazilian-abortion-frontline-13-december-2017?e=3fa4c971b0


“Niñas, No Madres” (Girls, Not Mothers) regional campaign, Latin America

“Niñas, No Madres” (Girls, Not Mothers) regional campaign, Latin America

by International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion
July 28, 2017

Planned Parenthood Global, Amnesty International, Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida Mexico (GIRE) and Latin American Campaign against Unsafe Abortion (CLACAI) have joined efforts to raise awareness on forced motherhood and its impact on girls’ lives and futures across Latin America through the “Niñas, No Madres” (Girls, Not Mothers) regional campaign.  The campaign calls for comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and safe, legal abortion services to end forced motherhood in girls in Latin America.

In the framework of the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, the campaign launched a call to women to share on social media what was their dream when they were girls, along with a childhood photo. The response was amazing: women from all over the region lit up social media with the hashtag #NiñasNoMadres. The timelines, full of cute pictures, brought attention to the toll that forced motherhood has taken on thousands of girls in the region. More than 40 national and international media outlets published pieces about the campaign, including Huffington Post, BuzzFeed and  AJ+.

Latin America is the only region in the world where births among girls under 15 years old is on the rise. Forced motherhood in girls is an urgent public health and human rights problem.

In Guatemala, five girls under the age of 14 become pregnant every day. In Nicaragua, the number of pregnant girls aged 10-14 years old increased 47% from 2001 to 2009. In Ecuador, pregnancy among girls under the age of 15 has increased by 74% in the last decade. In Peru, every year, more than 1,100 births are to girls 12-13 years old.

Planned Parenthood Global has produced the report “Stolen Lives” in English and Spanish, which summarizes qualitative and quantitative research conducted in Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru to document the dire physical, mental, and social health consequences of forced pregnancy on girls living in these countries. This report was used as input for the Hemispheric Report on Sexual Violence and Child Pregnancy recently released by the Organization of American States’ Committee of Experts of the Follow-Up Mechanism to the Belém do Pará Convention (MESECVI), which issues recommendations to States, including “ensuring that all pregnancies in girls are considered high risk and allowing legal termination of pregnancy.”

Join us in demanding a better future for girls in Latin America. Follow the campaign on Facebook @ninasnomadres and visit http://www.ninasnomadres.org for more information.

SOURCE: Planned Parenthood Global, email 17 July 2017

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Source: International Campaign for Women's Right to Safe Abortion: http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/ninas-no-madres-girls-not-mothers-regional-campaign-latin-america/