- Some history specialists say that the practice of abortion is as old as humanity itself.
- In the world, 59% of women have legal access to this service.
- In America, the only countries where abortion has been decriminalized are Argentina, Canada and Colombia.
The decriminalization of abortion It remains one of the most delicate and controversial issues that exist. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to reach a consensus because each person has their own opinion of it. Although the truth is that more and more nations pass legislation for its regulation.
Countries where it is allowed and prohibited
In the world, 59 percent of women have access to a legal abortion and only in 64 countries is the voluntary interruption of pregnancy decriminalized. In America, Argentina, Canada and Colombia it is allowed, while in Europe 38 nations approve it; Asia, 14; Africa, five; and in Oceania three, the historian Patricia Galeana Herrera, an academic from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, reported.
On the other hand, 24 countries prohibit it under any circumstances. In Nicaragua, after the triumph of the Revolution, it became one of the first Latin American countries where it was decriminalized without asking for grounds -as is the case in Cuba-. However, when Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined the Christian religion, there was a 180-degree regression with the total ban.
Galeana Herrera pointed out that in Mexico attempts have been made to establish a general penal code in matters that affect fundamental rights such as this one.
However, there is opposition from Congress for this to prosper, which breaks the equality that Mexican women should enjoy. If they reside in any entity of the 20 where it is still penalized, they cannot exercise the right to decide on their own body as those who live in Mexico City do. This breaks the legal equality that women in the country should have.
When inaugurating the Cycle of videoconferences: Gender relations and sexuality in the Mexico of the 20th centuryorganized by the Teaching Center for Foreigners (CEPE), considered that the decriminalization of abortion is a problem of public health and social justice.
“The motto of the marches in which we have participated to seek recognition of the right of women to decide on their own bodies is: sexual education to decide, contraceptives to prevent and decriminalization of abortion so as not to die.”
When did the practice of abortion begin?
In the meeting inaugurated by the director of the CEPE, Alberto Vital Díaz, the university student detailed: abortion is as old as humanity itself. Whether prohibited or not, it has always been practiced in all cultures and there have been different positions on the matter. In general, in the oldest, the fetus was considered part of the body of the pregnant woman.
With the Greeks there were different positions, for example Plato considered that it should be mandatory after 40 years of age to avoid malformations of the product. While in the Middle Ages, with Christianity, there was a discussion about when the soul came to the body, then Saint Augustine decided that there could be no soul in a body without form, therefore this practice was not a murder because it did not destroy it.
“There were other similar ideas, such as that of Gratian, centuries later Saint Albert the Great, who also had the same idea and who gave the same times for the soul to reach the male body before the female, the male in 40 days and in women practically at three months of gestation”.
However, in that century it begins to be limited. First it was Pope Sixtus V who considered it a sin, for which he gave it the penalty of excommunication and stated that any contraceptive method is worthy of the same sanction, the expert indicated as part of her exhibition “Historical perspective of abortion.”
Later, in 1917, the code of canon law established the excommunication for women who had an abortion and also for doctors and nurses who assisted her in that process, which was reiterated in 1965 at the Vatican Council. In 1988, the prohibition of any contraceptive method was highlighted; In 1993, Pope Karol Wojtyla asked 50,000 women raped by Serbs in Bosnia not to abort.
However, in 2011, Pope Ratzinger granted permission to priests to absolve young women who abort from sin, on World Youth Day, in Spain, and 200 confessionals were installed in the Retiro Park with that extraordinary absolution.
At present it has been understood in the world that interruption is a right of women to decide on their own body. In different countries they began to decriminalize it, the first was Sweden, starting in 1910. However, there was a setback in the United States – a nation that established jurisprudence with the total decriminalization of abortion – with the recent repeal of this right of women.
“In 1975, no less than in Italy, where the Vatican State is located, the Court had an important discussion where it was pointed out that in the face of the rights of the mother and an embryo that could become a human being if born, there was no equivalence and that their right to decide whether or not to continue with their pregnancy prevailed and prevailed.”
While in 1985 the Spanish Constitutional Court established that the right to motherhood was exclusive to them, and that the State could not force a woman to be a mother if she did not want to or could not be.
According to the university academic, whoever decides to interrupt a pregnancy has reasons to do so and must enjoy the right to do so. However, when the State and church penalize and criminalize women, those with limited resources who live in a state where it is sanctioned and cannot travel to the capital of the Mexican Republic or to any federal entity where it has been decriminalized, resort to clandestine clinics. and they end, on numerous occasions, with their lives, because they die from infections or hemorrhages.
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