Across Latin America, with few exceptions, abortion is highly restricted and mostly unavailable. Even where laws are less limiting, women and young girls face significant obstacles to accessing safe abortion services. Women who are poor, indigenous, Afro-descendant, young, from low socio-economic backgrounds, or living in rural areas are more likely to encounter barriers. Legislative and administrative obstacles, unwillingness of health systems to provide care, inadequate information, and lack of trained providers, further limit access to legal and safe abortion. And, increasingly, so does the reporting of women to the police by their healthcare providers for criminal activity related to abortion, according to Ipas research findings. This in turn can lead to discrimination, institutional violence, arrest, detention, prosecution, and even imprisonment.
The purpose of this event is to inform a broad audience of stakeholders, and the wider Washington policy community, about the human rights violations that can occur when criminal abortion laws are enforced in Latin America. We hope to stimulate discussion around principles of equality and non-discrimination in health care and explore ways to modify existing laws, regulations, and practices that sustain or tolerate violence against women, as addressed in various reports of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
This event is co-sponsored by the Inter-American Dialogue, Ipas, Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, and the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM). Copies of our partner’s recent reports and analyses on this issue will be available at the event.
Follow the conversation on Twitter at @The_Dialogue, @oneillinstitute, @IpasOrg, and @CIMOEA
Speakers:
Oscar Cabrera
Executive Director, O’Neill Institute
Bia Galli
Senior Regional Policy Advisor for Latin America, Ipas
Luz Patricia Mejia Guerrero
Technical Secretary MESECVI, OAS Inter-American Commission of Women
Moderator:
Michael Shifter
President, Inter-American Dialogue
