Abortion ruling eliminates hurdles for Colombian women

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — From the first day of her pregnancy, the Colombian woman was fainting. Then she started to vomit constantly and had two blood clots. Her health wasn’t going well, nor was her baby’s, so she chose to get an abortion.

But the woman, an engineer from Bogota, had to wait almost six months as a team of doctors and psychologists at her public health care provider debated whether a risk to her health made her eligible for the procedure. At the time, the law in Colombia called on doctors to make a decision within five days of abortion requests.

“March went by, April and then May. The doctors had several meetings and nothing happened,” said the woman, who did not want to have her name used because she still hasn’t told her family about that abortion 11 years ago. She said that at one point in her pregnancy, she was losing the ability to walk and finally paid a doctor at a private clinic to carry out the abortion and certify that she was at risk.

Colombia’s Constitutional Court this week ruled that women can get abortions until the 24th week of their pregnancy without any permits from lawyers or doctors, removing almost insurmountable hurdles for getting the procedure legally.

Previously abortions were allowed in the South American country only if women had letters from doctors proving their health was in danger, if they could show their pregnancy was a consequence of rape or if doctors certified the fetus had no chance of surviving.

From 1998 through July 2019, 346 women were punished for abortions — 85 of them minors — according to Colombian prosecutors.

The court said the existing ban violated several rights — including to health, reproductive rights and liberty of conscience. It said the decision to give birth or not is “a very personal, individual...