By Natalia Falah
July 22, 2025

In Colombia, legal access to abortion services remains a deeply uneven in practice, especially for many indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and migrant woman. While abortion was decriminalized under certain conditions by the Constitutional Court in 2006 and later fully decriminalized up to 24th week of pregnancy in 2022, the right to terminate a pregnancy exists only on paper for these communities. On the ground, what prevails–revealed in a recent report published by local newspaper El Espectador–is a geography of silence, one marked by systemic barriers, cultural stigma, geographic isolation, and institutional racism.

While Colombia’s progressive abortion rulings have been hailed globally as landmark victories for reproductive rights, their implementation has been uneven. In urban centers like Bogota or Medellin, women with access to information and healthcare can often exercise their rights with relative ease. But in rural, indigenous, and Afro-descendant territories, or in urban peripheries where migrants settle, access is obstructed by multiple overlapping forms of exclusion.

Continued: https://colombiaone.com/2025/07/22/colombia-afro-indigenous-women-abortion/