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Peru takes immense step forward for women to access abortion - rights group

by Anastasia Moloney | @anastasiabogota | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Thursday, 10 July 2014 05:37 GMT

REUTERS/Alex Lee

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An "immense step forward" in circumstances where access is limited - reproductive rights group

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ninety years after Peru passed a law allowing abortion in cases of when a woman’s life or health is at risk, the government has adopted national guidelines making it easier for women to access their abortion rights, a reproductive rights group says.

The U.S.-based Center for Reproductive Rights said the guidelines and protocols, which came into effect this month in Peru, streamline procedures for legal abortions. They also lay out referral and appeals processes for abortion cases, as well as the amount of time health officials are allowed to take to respond to requests for a legal abortion.

The guidelines will provide clarity for physicians and patients on legal abortion in Peru, said Monica Arango, regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the Centre for Reproductive Rights.

“It’s an immense step forward to ensure women can have access to safe, legal abortion services in these limited circumstances,” Arango told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

“I do think this will make a significant change, especially in Peru’s big cities, though it will be more challenging to implement the guidelines in rural areas. It will require a great effort by the ministry of health and it needs to take steps to explain these guidelines.”

Peru’s guidelines follow recommendations made by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in a landmark 2011 ruling when the U.N. said Peru had violated the human rights of a 13-year-old girl, known as L.C., who was denied a legal abortion.

Despite laws in Peru allowing abortions when a woman’s health or life is at risk, doctors refused to operate on L.C. because they said it posed a threat to her pregnancy, which was the result of rape. She ended up having a miscarriage, but the medical care came too late and left her quadriplegic, the Center for Reproductive Rights said.

“In addition to implementing the new guidelines, we also urge the state to provide reparations to L.C. and other women who have suffered greatly because of Peru’s failure to provide legal abortion services,” Arango said in a statement.

RAPE PREGNANCIES

Like many countries in Latin America, Peru has stringent abortion laws.

Women who get pregnant as a result of rape are not allowed an abortion in Peru. This goes against several U.N. CEDAW recommendations urging Peru to change its laws to allow abortion in cases of rape.

“The devastating impact of criminalising abortion in cases of rape is particularly far-reaching in Peru, which has the highest rate of reported rape in South America,” the Center for Reproductive Rights said.

Exacerbating the plight of Peruvian women who get pregnant as a result of rape is a law that prohibits public health services from providing emergency contraception. Only women who can afford emergency contraception can get access to it from private health providers, the rights group said.

The Roman Catholic Church’s grip on Latin American politics, influence on society and public condemnation of abortion - as well as the rise of evangelical groups - are all factors behind the region’s strict abortion laws.

These laws mean Latin America’s women are more likely to undergo dangerous backstreet abortions, rights groups say.

Restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number performed, according to a study by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute for reproductive health.

The study found that the 2008 abortion rate in Latin America was 32 per 1,000 women of childbearing age, while in Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds, the rate is 12 per 1,000.

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