Chile’s president pushes to ease ban on all abortions

President Michelle Bachelet sent legislation to Congress on Saturday proposing to allow some abortions in Chile, a socially conservative South American nation that is among the few countries in the world that ban abortion in all circumstances. The bill would decriminalize abortions in three types of cases: malformation of a fetus, a pregnancy posing a threat to the life of a woman carrying a fetus, and conception caused by rape. Bachelet’s proposal is likely to face an arduous debate in Congress, where several opposition legislators and even some members of her New Majority bloc have already announced they will fight the change.

There isn’t always agreement on issues that relate to each person’s conscience.

Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet

The president announced last May that she would push such legislation. She noted that therapeutic abortions were allowed during the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Bachelet has been pushing legislation through Congress at a dizzying pace, promising to upend some of the dictatorship’s longest-lasting legacies and to bridge Chile’s wide income inequality gap. She has championed tax reform, a revamping of Chile’s education system, an overhaul of Pinochet-era electoral rules and a law allowing civil unions for same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples.

Americas