Ecuador’s Creeping Criminalization of Abortion · Global Voices
Patricia Carolina Saucedo Añez

Marita Seara, blogging for Voces Visibles, warns about the growing criminalization of abortion in Ecuador, one of the most difficult countries in Latin America for women to obtain an abortion, second only to Venezuela.
Hay dos únicos casos en los cuales es permitido el aborto: cuando corre peligro la vida de la mujer y cuando se trata de una “violación a una discapacitada mental”. A mi parecer, inaudito. Leo en el medio ecuatoriano, Plan V, y no salgo de mi asombro, el proceso en el cual se trata de despenalizar el aborto en dicho país, un país donde, según se señala en dicho medio, 380 mil mujeres aproximadamente han sido víctimas de violación, un país donde una de cada cuatro mujeres han sido víctimas de algún tipo de agresión sexual, un país en el cual ha aumentado un 74,8% los embarazos de niñas entre 10 y 14 años, muchos de los cuales parecen estar ligados a violación sexual; un país donde más de 3.600 niñas menores de 15 años son madres producto de una violación.
There are only two cases where abortion is allowed: when mother's life is in danger and when it's a “rape committed against a learning disabled woman”. To me, it's outrageous. I read on the Ecuadorian new website Plan V and I'm astonished [about] these attempts to criminalize abortion in that country—a country where, as Plan V points out, about 380,000 women have been raped, where one out of four women has been the victim of some kind of sexual assault, and a country where pregnancy in 10- to 14-year-old girls has increased by 74.8 percent—many of them apparently related to sexual assaults. This is a country where more than 3,600 girls younger than 15 are mothers as result of a rape.
Criminalizing abortion would have profound repercussions for doctor-patient confidentiality, not to mention aggravate the country's already staggering social inequalities.
The criminalization concept could be spreading, too. More than a dozen women now languish in El Salvadorian prisons, convicted of “aggravated homicide” after miscarrying. Some of these would-be mothers are serving out 30-year prison sentences.
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