Abortion

 I think we are all fully aware of what abortion contemplates, but do we really know when it started to be forbidden in Chile? 

In this blog I'm going to talk about it, since I think it's important to have a more complete notion about this topic.

The first instance of discussion of this issue begins after independence, in the 1874 Penal Code, which with a markedly moralistic tenor places the crime of abortion in Title VII "against the order of families and public morality". Almost 60 years later, the Sanitary Code of 1931 issued under the government of Carlos Ibañez, indicated in its Article 226 that: "Only for therapeutic purposes, a pregnancy may be interrupted or an intervention may be performed to make a woman sterile, which will require the documented opinion of three medical practitioners", which was later modified under the government of Frei Montalva, reducing the documented opinion to two medical practitioners.

Years later, the absolute prohibition of consensual abortion in our country is found in Article 119 of the health code, introduced by Law 18.826 dictated by the military junta in mid-September 1989, which made Chile one of the five countries in the world to adopt this position.

Taking into account that before this date abortion was considered legal (under certain rules), how do you explain, then, the abrupt change given in 1989?

Although this issue was discussed on several occasions throughout the dictatorship, in none of these instances was the legality of abortion changed. However, it was the pressure exerted by important sectors, particularly the high hierarchy of the national Church and the doctrine led by the UDI, that finally led to the illegalization of abortion in Chile. 

It should be noted that in all these instances of discussion on this issue, the opinion of not a single woman was ever taken into account. This leads us to reflect, when will the day come when women's rights will be considered in their totality?