Bogotá Council approved a project that eliminates barriers to the voluntary interruption of pregnancy

The city project, which on February 2 was approved by the mayor, was authored by councilor Luis Carlos Leal. (EFE-Infobae)

On February 2, 2023, the Bogotá Council became the first popularly elected corporation to issue a norm whose sole purpose is to eliminate all barriers to access to the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVE).

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In order to guarantee the right to life, full health, human dignity and the free development of the personality of women and people with the capacity to gestate, it was approved in Plenary, with 24 votes in favor. and 2 against, the draft Agreement that guarantees the right to abortion, authored by the councilor of the Green Alliance, Luis Carlos Leal.

“Since the Constitutional Court eliminated abortion as a crime as of week 24, it urged all territorial entities to have regulations that would precisely eliminate the barriers to accessing this right. This is a project that we had prepared before the Constitutional Court ruling came out, because we firmly believe that it is a public health measure and that it will improve and humanize the quality of care for those who want to access this right. in dignified, respectable conditions and without there being replicators of violence, ”councilman Leal told Infobae.

He emphasized that this project was presented before the pronouncement of the Court, it was approved in the first debate in March of last year and finally this Thursday the final debate was advanced in the Bogotá Council, so that it becomes a City Agreement.

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“We are the first corporation and we are even above the Congress of the Republic, which after the sanction of the Court should have legislated in favor of eliminating the barriers so that the health systems are friendly, so that ideology is not imposed by on top of rights, and so that people who want to access this right can do so without any barrier”, the green councilor told this media outlet.

Now, what does this agreement translate into for those women who want to terminate their pregnancy within the times contemplated by law? Well then, clarifying that Bogotá is acting based on national legislation and on what the Constitutional Court said (“we are not saying whether abortion is legal or not, which has been the delegitimization that this project has had”, said the councilor) , this agreement translates into the following actions:

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In 2022, 126 girls between the ages of 10 and 14 became mothers, while there were 5,238 between the ages of 15 and 19. In 2021, 6,600 adolescent mothers were registered in the Colombian capital

“What we are doing is giving teeth to that sentence of the Court and what we are doing with this project is generating tools that force not only the current District Administration but also future ones to evaluate the EPS, IPS, all the entities health services, to ensure timely routes; so that women who want to terminate their pregnancy can do so without a single barrier; that they are not violated in the process; that they always find opportunities to access the right; that they find the reporting routes when this right is not guaranteed and that training tools are generated to mitigate the impact of adolescent pregnancy”, said the councilor, who concluded that this Agreement gives the District a period of one year from its issuance, so that the measures stipulated therein are adopted.

“In the agreement, as approved by the Council, they have until this year, until 2023, for the Ministry of Health to verify that both EPS and IPS guarantee everything that I just mentioned without any social violence,” the lobbyist concluded. .

Finally, the councilor drew attention to some very specific figures issued by the Ministry of Health and Social Protection: the unplanned pregnancy rate reached 52% of all pregnancies, an average of 70 women die each year from complications derived from unsafe or clandestine abortions, and since the decriminalization of abortion, through contraception and safe abortion services, in 2019 about 374,063 unsafe abortions were avoided in Colombia.

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