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It is estimated that every day at least 185 clandestine abortions are performed in Bolivia, a situation that puts at risk the lives of girls and women who resort to unsafe processes to terminate their pregnancies, a situation that puts on the table for debate the legalization of this practice in the country.<\/p>\n
Since 2014, Bolivia has had a ruling from the Constitutional Court that establishes that victims of rape or in cases where the mother’s life is in danger can proceed with an abortion, and despite the fact that this ruling has been in force for a decade, there are still obstacles to its execution.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough the sentence has been an achievement for the women’s movement (…) it is still very difficult for it to be applied by officials who are unaware of it and we are definitely a patriarchal society,\u201d Tania Sanchez, director of the Women’s Coordinating Committee, told EFE.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the director of Ipas Bolivia, Malena Morales, told EFE that \u201cunsafe abortions\u201d are the third cause of maternal mortality in the country, which makes this situation \u201ca risk to women’s health\u201d and a \u201cproblem of public health and social justice\u201d because those with the least resources are the most affected.<\/p>\n
According to Ipas data, between 40,000 and 60,000 abortions are performed each year in the country, but this figure does not show the exact reality of this situation, which is practiced in clandestine or unsafe places.<\/p>\n
Morales indicated that according to hospital reports since 2014, when the sentence was already in force, until 2023 there were 97,704 abortions, of which about 753 are \u201cinduced abortions\u201d in which legal termination of pregnancy was practiced, while the other cases are \u201cincomplete abortions that have reached the health services.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that abortions in safe conditions, with technical personnel, with adequate technology and hygienic means have a very low probability of having a complication and that what puts women at risk are unsafe and clandestine processes, uterine perforations and degrees of infection that can cause death.<\/p>\n
\u201cWomen’s access to the health system and protected under a law would prevent women from dying from unsafe abortions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Proposed law<\/p>\n
The pro-government senator Virginia Velasco informed the media about a comprehensive bill that addresses sexual and reproductive rights, proposing the legalization of abortion.<\/p>\n
Velasco considered that it is important to debate this situation and that it is necessary to \u201cget the taboo out of our minds\u201d, so that this proposal also corresponds to recommendations made by the World Health Organization and the United Nations.<\/p>\n
It is expected that the initiative will be submitted in the next few months to the Legislative Assembly for its analysis and, for now, it is known that it proposes a \u201csingle requirement\u201d for the termination of pregnancy, which is the signature of the \u201cinformed consent\u201d of the pregnant woman.<\/p>\n
For Sanchez and Morales, this proposal is important because it is comprehensive as it addresses issues such as access to contraceptives, intercultural-based care, obstetric violence and that abortion is part of this law that is long awaited by women’s groups.<\/p>\n
Both also agree that Bolivia is still a \u201cconservative\u201d society and that it is \u201cafraid\u201d to address these issues, but that the reality is that these situations need to be discussed and not just ignored.<\/p>\n
\u201cReality is demanding us to talk about the issue, when we see, for example, that every day around 30 cases of sexual violence against girls and adolescents are reported, we cannot turn a blind eye,\u201d said Sanchez.<\/p>\n
He added that Bolivia is the second country in Latin America with the second highest rates of sexual violence and teenage pregnancies and that in 2023 alone 1,376 legal terminations of pregnancy have been performed, of which 294 correspond to sexual violence and 59% of rapes were to minors under 15 years of age, a situation that he considered \u201calarming\u201d.<\/p>\n
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It is estimated that every day at least 185 clandestine abortions are performed in Bolivia, a situation that puts at risk the lives of girls and women who resort to unsafe processes to terminate their pregnancies, a situation that puts on the table for debate the legalization of this practice in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2076,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-country"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipasbolivia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}