The legislators are summoned on December 9 at 09:30 to the first debate of the project that guarantees the right to interrupt pregnancy due to rape
Pro-life organizations and feminist sectors are preparing sit-ins, campaigns and protest actions for next Thursday, December 9, when the National Assembly is expected to start the first debate on the bill to guarantee the right to voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the event of of rape.
The meeting is scheduled at 09:30 and in person. The criticisms of the report refer to the three critical knots that the project maintains regarding conscientious objection, the requirements and until what week the pregnancy can be interrupted.
Project that guarantees abortion due to rape does not include the time for the termination of pregnancy
For this debate, pro-life organizations and the feminist group “Vivas nos quiero” are preparing sit-ins in the vicinity of the legislature to publicize their position on the legalization of abortion for rape in Ecuador. Both sectors hope to run a campaign in networks nationwide.
In April 2021, the Constitutional Court (CC) ruled that numeral 2 of article 150 of the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code (COIP) is unconstitutional, which criminalized abortion for rape, because it only allowed the interruption of pregnancy in the case of women with mental disability rape victims.
In the ruling, it granted a period of two months for the Ombudsman’s Office to prepare a project and present it to the National Assembly to be discussed and approved within a period of six months that expires at the end of December. However, the Legislative Administration Council, this week, declared a legislative recess from December 16 to 30, thus interrupting the terms of laws in process.
The legislators were already notified with the report approved with eight votes in the Justice Commission which does not include the time in which the pregnancy can be interrupted due to rape, which was questioned by the sectors for life and even a group of legislators.
Amparo Medina, spokesperson for the pro-life group, describes the report of the Justice table as shameful due to the mistakes made in not treating the project article by article, and for the omission of the observations issued by the groups that defend life from conception .
Medina assures that the report is biased and considers that this report was not prepared in the commission, but by outsiders where they did not notice the participation of groups and people who were part of the table.
The pro-life spokesperson clarifies that what the CC asked in the ruling is that the right to life be equated with a woman’s decision to have an abortion, and that it never talks about the right to abort; because “there is no right to kill, but rather the right to live,” he stresses.
What he questions is that the report leaves open the possibility of abortions occurring up to nine months, which is not only infanticide but also puts the life of the woman they claim to defend at risk.
Likewise, Medina claims that the rapist’s complaint is not required in the project, and also in conscientious objection the doctors will be forced to perform abortion.
This sector announces demonstrations for next week, but they also hope that the Justice Commission will be sanctioned for not preparing a report that takes into account the participation of other groups other than the abortionist ideology. For December 8, they have marches programmed with light blue scarves, as a sign of raising the voices of the born.
From the feminist group Vivas Nos Queremos, Ana Cristina Vera, affirms that they are happy with the report of the bill, because it complies with international standards on human rights in relation to the regulation of abortion for reasons.
Vera affirms that abortion due to rape in most countries there are no deadlines and this because they are extreme causes that limit access to this group of people who are in situations of extreme vulnerability and risk; For this reason, it is important that the law does not set time to interrupt the pregnancy, he adds.
The feminist spokesperson comments that the important thing in this law is to put girls and women who are survivors of sexual violence at the center, and as a litigator in cases of violated girls, she points out that it is the girls who later find out about their pregnancy, and limiting the right to abortion to five weeks will leave girls out, because regularly girls arrive at a greeting service at 18 and 20 weeks of gestation when they become aware of the changes in their body.
Assemblyman Dalton Bacigalupo (ID), a member of the Justice table, clarifies that he approved the report with the aim of not delaying the debate in plenary any more, and that in this scenario the observations that must be incorporated in the second debate will be collected.
Regarding the temporality, Bacigalupo, considers that it should be included in the law with scientific bases; “It cannot be that there is no definition of time limits for the purpose of promoting the termination of pregnancy due to rape.” (I)
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