In 2023, there were a total of 18 terminations of pregnancies of more than 22 weeks at the Germán Urquidi Maternity Hospital, according to the president of the Bolivian Society of Neonatology, Liliana Suárez. The Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics Cochabamba Branch and the Bolivian Society of Neonatology expressed their rejection, assuring that the same regulation stipulates the interruption of pregnancies with a gestational age of 22 weeks maximum, when they were caused by rape. They pointed out that doctors act under pressure from institutions and organizations.
Suarez reported that there is no national or departmental registry. “However, in the Germán Urquidi Maternity Hospital, 18 patients have been registered”. He added that in all these cases the newborns died.
The obstetrician gynecologist Frank Choquecahuana, representing the Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics Cochabamba Branch, said that in 2014 the Constitutional Court issued a ruling that gave certain solutions to the Criminal Code that was then empty; but that did not respect the norm and violated the rights of the doctor, the patient “and the human being in formation”.
He said that since 2023 they have been working with the Ministry of Health, but that there is also non-compliance and they continue to promote the interruption of pregnancies over 22 weeks, “when according to the norm, based on the technical procedure and the model of attention given to victims of sexual violence, who have suffered a pregnancy as a result, it is only interrupted up to 22 weeks”. He added that they are proposing an action of unconstitutionality to clarify “up to when a pregnancy resulting from rape can really be interrupted”, among other legal proposals.