Challenging Latin America’s draconian abortion laws!
El Salvador’s Teodora del Carmen Vásquez was nine months pregnant when she felt a piercing pain in her abdomen. She called emergency services, but started bleeding and lost consciousness before help arrived. As she came round, police officers surrounded her and accused her of murdering her baby by inducing an abortion. Vásquez, who was 24 at the time, was handcuffed and detained. She was hastily sentenced to 30 years in prison for aggravated murder.
Teodora is just one of the many women in Latin America serving long prison sentences in countries where abortion is totally illegal or severely restricted.
• More than 97% of women of childbearing age in Latin America and the Caribbean live in countries where abortion is restricted or banned altogether.
• Abortion is not permitted for any reason in seven countries. It is allowed to save the woman’s life, usually as the only reason, in eight others. A few of the latter countries permit abortion in cases of rape (Brazil, Panama and some states of Mexico) or fetal impairment (Panama and almost half of the states of Mexico).
• Fewer than 3% of the region’s women live in countries where abortion is broadly legal—that is, permitted either without restriction as to reason or on socioeconomic grounds.
Professor of Law Dr. Verónica Undurraga from Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago will be talking about the struggle for legal abortion in Latin America and presenting the case of Chile where a recent change in the law decriminalized the total abortion ban.
The meeting is open to all and free. The talk will be given in english.
Seminarrom A på Studentsenteret Parkveien 1.
Onsdag 31. januar kl.18:30