With 128 legislators, this February 3, the National Assembly reinstated session 758 to start the second debate of the bill that guarantees the interruption of pregnancy of girls, adolescents and women in case of rape.
At the same time, pro-life and pro-abortion groups staged sit-ins outside the Legislative Palace and activated campaigns on social networks to present their positions on this bill that emerged after the Constitutional Court ruling in April 2021, which decriminalized abortion. for rape in Ecuador.
Legislators wore green garments and others white with phrases alluding to the subject under discussion. This debate began without consolidated positions in the five political forces that act in Parliament, four of them resolved to free their assembly members from partisan discipline for the debate and vote on this project.
What will be the maximum gestation period to allow abortion in cases of rape in Ecuador: the National Assembly defines it
The debate began with a speech by the legislator, Johanna Moreira (ID), a member of the Justice Commission, who argued that temporality should not be set from personal criteria, but from the reality of Ecuador, of the health system, of the reality of rurality, of those women who live in remote places.
He stated that according to figures from the Ecuadorian Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC), 255 girls are raped and give birth in the country annually; for this reason, she said that the majority report that she defends has been considered a differentiation of terms that go from 22 weeks of gestation for girls under 18 years of age and up to 20 weeks of gestation for women of legal age, without this being discriminatory, but rather according to the need for priority attention.
Please, said Moreira, the law should not contain a period of less than 22 weeks of gestation, the girls are unaware that they are pregnant, even more so the girls with limited resources who live a different reality and are often surrounded by their aggressor.
The second legislator to intervene Nathalie Arias (CREO), who requested an information point to clarify to the room that abortion in case of rape is an exception, not a right.
The representative of UNES abroad, Esther Cuesta, maintained that the Constitutional Court was clear in establishing that for girls under 14 years of age, no requirement should be imposed to facilitate the voluntary interruption of pregnancy due to rape. In the case of women over 14 years of age, the Court establishes the incorporation of requirements, but these requirements must not be re-victimizing and must not generate disproportionate burdens for women. Therefore this process must be restorative, she said.
That in Ecuador, she added, rape is a daily reality in public, private spaces, and in the family space, and that according to data from the intersectoral policy for the prevention of pregnancy in girls and adolescents and the Ministry of Health, around seven girls from 9 to 14 years of age and 25 adolescents from 14 to 19 years of age, give birth daily in the country, which places us in the third country in the region with the highest rate of pregnant girls and adolescents. He stated that according to the Ministry of Health, more than 3,000 girls are mothers a year, most of these cases of pregnancies are the product of rape.
Geraldine Weber (PSC), proclaimed herself a defender of life and began by pointing out that the only thing that should be aborted is this ill-conceived bill. That this law should be shelved, she raised.
He said that the law discriminates, does not repair the victim and looks at an innocent. He recalled that the crime is rape and that the text does not include the complaint against the rapist. Rapists must be imprisoned, and not an innocent child, perhaps the son of a rapist has no right to live, he asked.
Sofía Sánchez from Pachakutik stated that the Assembly is late to comply with the ruling of the Constitutional Court. She indicated that the two majority and minority reports lead to extremes, and what must prevail are the human rights of the victims.
That the issue of temporality must lead to a high-level debate and be based on technical criteria. That he agrees with the differentiation of ages for the termination of pregnancy in the event of rape and appealed to the court to find a balance.
Until noon the debate continued in the legislature, and as some legislators anticipated, at least eight days will be requested to present the final text for voting, once the presentations of the assembly members are finished on February 3. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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