Inequality in Access to Abortion Rights in Latin America
The fight for women's right to legal, safe, and free abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean persists, with varying laws and ongoing threats of regression.
This Saturday 28 September marks, as every year, the Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion, launched in 1990, at the 5th Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting, held in Argentina.
Since then, the international day of action for safe abortion has been nurtured by the agreements reached at the Cairo Conference on Population and Development in 1994, which recognised sexual and reproductive rights as part of human rights, and by the mandates of Human Rights Committees demanding that countries decriminalise abortion and protect the rights of girls, adolescents and women.
“This is a historic struggle of the feminist movement. We have made progress in the recognition of women’s human rights in the region, but those related to sexual and reproductive rights and abortion continue to be polarising; however, we have no doubt that they must be integrated into our rights as a whole”.
So said Aidé García, director of the non-governmental organisation Catholic Women for the Right to Decide in Mexico and former director of the organisation’s Latin American network, present in 10 countries.
The activist spoke to IPS from New York, where this September she takes part in several meetings in the framework of the High-Level Segment of the 79th General Assembly of the United Nations and the Summit of the Future.
About 51% of the more than 660 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are women. This population faces diverse gender inequalities, according to a joint report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and UN Women in 2023.
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