El Salvador considers changes to hyper-strict abortion policy.
| Autor | Witte-Lebhar, Benjamin |
El Salvador's total ban on abortion, long a source of concern for local and international rights groups, is now a subject of serious debate in the legislature, raising hopes among the policy's many opponents that change may finally be in the air.
The debate centers around a government-backed bill, submitted last October, that proposes scaling back the blanket ban to allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest, or for so-called "therapeutic" abortions, when a fetus is considered nonviable or the pregnancy poses a serious risk to the mother's health.
The legislation was introduced by the then-president of the Asamblea Legislativa (Legislative Assembly, AL), Lorena Pena of the governing Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, FMLN), which promises full support should the measure go to a full vote in the unicameral legislature. Pena, now the vice-president of the AL, is the FMLN's highest-ranking deputy.
El Salvador is one of just a handful of countries to prohibit abortion outright, even in cases where terminating a pregnancy could save the mother's life. The no-exceptions policy dates back to the late 1990s, when it was pushed through by conservative lawmakers from Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Republican Alliance, ARENA), the governing party at the time. Other countries on the list are Chile, Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, Suriname, Andorra, and Malta. In Chile, legislation to loosen the abortion ban is making its way through Congress (NotiSur, Jan. 9, 2015, and April 8, 2016).
For now, the FMLN bill is still under committee review, where is its being held up by strong opposition from the hard-right ARENA, now the country's leading opposition group. Even if the measure does go to vote in the full AL, there's no guarantee it will be approved. Passage will require a simple majority (43 votes), something neither the FMLN nor AreNa have right now.
The left-leaning FMLN controls the presidency-under Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a former guerrilla commander elected in 2014--but has just 31 of the legislature's 84 seats. ARENA has 35. The AL's remaining seats are divided between the center-right Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional (Grand Alliance for National Unity, GANA), which has 11; the conservative Partido de Concertacion Nacional (National Coalition Party, PCN), with six; and the centrist Partido Democrata Cristiano (Christian Democratic Party, PDC), which has just one deputy.
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