CHILE: Battle over reproductive rights intensifies in Latin America as Pope Benedict prepares to visit

Record ID: 183886

  • Title: CHILE: Battle over reproductive rights intensifies in Latin America as Pope Benedict prepares to visit
  • Date: 3rd May 2007
  • Summary: (W1) SANTIAGO, CHILE (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF MORNING-AFTER PILL BOXES IN PHARMACY (W1) SANTIAGO, CHILE (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) MOTHER TINA MARDONES, SAYING: "This health clinic gives out emergency contraception to all women older than 15 who ask for it." PUBLIC HEALTH CLINIC CHILEAN PRESIDENT MICHELLE BACHELET IN OFFICE (SOUNDBITE) (Spanish) CHILEAN PRESIDENT MICHELLE BACHELET, SAYING: "As President, I have to protect the adolescents. Because they are being taken care of and orientated in these situations when the family is fulfilling its role. When the family is not fulfilling its role the state must provide support. It is also an issue of public health and it is also an ethical responsibility of the state and of the public health system. We have to take charge of what is happening in Chile."
  • Embargoed: 18th May 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Chile
  • Country: Chile
  • Topics: Legal System,Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA4AS39IB14DG3TBVW284ZHG389
  • Story Text: Chile is a country that has long been dominated by the Catholic Church.
    Often regarded as the most socially conservative in Latin America, abortion is illegal, and so is gay marriage, but despite the sway of the Catholic Church, the government this year managed to push through a law giving girls as young as 14 the right to the morning-after-pill, free of charge and without the consent of their parents.
    Meanwhile in Mexico, the nation's capital recently legalised abortion - breaking new ground in the battle for reproductive rights in Latin America.
    These are issues Pope Benedict must tackle when he visits Brazil in May for a once-in-a-decade summit of bishops from the region - looking to bridge the divide between Church doctrine and the social realities in Latin America.
    In Chile, the church fought the morning-after-pill to the end; in January Chile's constitutional court overthrew the law on technical grounds, forcing the government to reintroduce it by presidential decree.
    Catholic bishops tell their followers the pill is a chemically induced abortion.
    "Our outlook was not only to do with the morning-after pill but what was behind it. And what is behind it? We defend and promote life. And if we believe in the value of life, of all human life from the exact instant of conception to its decline and natural death," said acting Catholic Bishop Cristian Contreras Villarroel of the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral.
    The Catholic Church however is slowly losing ground in Chile, and many Christians are turning to other institutions such as the Evangelical Church who are seen as more in touch with modern needs.
    In the past decade the Catholic Church in Chile has lost 10 per cent of its followers while numbers in Evangelical Churches have grown rapidly.
    With highly emotional and musical services, the Evangelical Church says it has stepped in to provide the religious fervour missing in the Catholic Church.
    "The Catholic Church has spent the majority of its time neglecting its followers in one way or other to influence the political sphere across the entire spectrum. To be able to be in a privileged position, that is to say almost co-governing, they are forced to neglect the main purpose of their missionary and spiritual work. And that is the place that we (the Evangelical Church) has taken up," said Evangelical pastor Eduardo Durán.
    Many say the Catholic Church is out of touch with modern-day Chile, and took the morning-after pill debate too far.
    While seventy percent of Chileans still consider themselves Catholic, polls have shown than 90 percent believe that Catholics should be free to choose their method of birth control.
    The government says the majority of pregnant teenagers are from poorer families who are unable to pay for contraception.
    Even those Chileans who say they would never take the emergency contraception say they think it is good their government is giving girls and women more options.
    "For me it is good that the government has put it on the market and that women can use it. But as a mother, or now that I am pregnant, I am not going to take it at least for the moment. If I had of had the option to take it, I wouldn't have taken it," said 19-year-old Maria Jose Cortés.
    "For mothers like me that are single it is good because there are not so many teenage pregnancies," said 17-year-old single mother Camila Henríque.
    The morning-after pill works by providing high levels of hormones to stop ovulation, or implantation of a fertilised egg. Before the new law it was available only by prescription to those who could pay for it. Girls between the ages of 14 and 18 needed parental consent.
    "This health clinic gives out emergency contraception to all women older than 15 that ask for it," said mother Tina Mardones.
    Some conservatives mayors have said they will refuse to allow the distribution of the pill to youngsters in areas under their control, but the government later warned they would be forced to do so by law.
    President Michelle Bachelet, a former paediatrician and Chile's first female head of state, said at the time that it was essential to help poorer girls avoid unwanted pregnancies.
    "As President, I have to protect the adolescents. Because they are being taken care of and orientated in these situations when the family is fulfilling its role. When the family is not fulfilling its role the state must provide support. It is also an issue of public health and it is also an ethical responsibility of the state and of the public health system. We have to take charge of what is happening in Chile," Bachelet said.
    While accepting change is coming slowly in Chile, with even young teenagers still turning out to anti-abortion protests - social values are starting to shift.
    It appears that an apparently Catholic-dominated Chile has started to have some very un-Catholic opinions.
    In a 2005 poll 41 percent of Chileans even said women should be free to abort - a huge surprise in a region where few nations allow abortion even in cases of rape.
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