Chilean Chamber of Deputies rejects decriminalizing abortion and shelves the initiative for a year

The Chamber of Deputies de Chile rejected on Tuesday a bill that decriminalizes abortion up to 14 weeks of pregnancy and will archive the initiative for one year, which represents a severe blow to the country’s feminist movements.

With 65 votes againstWith 62 votes in favor and one abstention, the Lower House “rejected the bill that decriminalizes consensual abortion by women within the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy,” the institution reported in a statement.

Although the same chamber had approved “in general” the project on September 28, the decision to reject it after analyzing the particular regulations of the text files the norm and does not allow a new process in a year.

“We will present again and again (a new project); we will lose as many times as necessary to win a free, legal and free abortion for all women,” said the leftist deputy, Maite Orsini, one of the legislators who presented the project. in 2018.

I do not know when we will present it, but I promise you that we will do it as many times as necessary, “he stressed.

After its approval in “general”, which allows the opening of the debate, the text returned to the Women’s Commission, where the norm was adapted to the gender identity law in order to include transsexual people who maintain their female genitality but they have made their registered sex change.

Back in the room, the proposal was debated for two days and it was voted on Tuesday, without reaching a majority to approve the project.

The text modified the Penal Code to free women who undergo an abortion up to 14 weeks of gestation from penal sanction. The penalty for whoever causes or consents to an abortion outside of the three permitted grounds (risk of life to the mother, rape, and fetal non-viability) would be applied only if the abortion was performed after that period.

Current legislation establishes a penalty of between three years and one day to 5 years in prison.

Too the norm related to who cooperated with abortion was modified, whose sanction was also to be applied after 14 weeks of gestation.

Until 2017, Chile was one of the few nations in the world that did not allow the termination of pregnancy under any circumstances. Since that year, it is allowed only for the three reasons.