While visiting my 21-year-old daughter at the end of her six months of study in Argentina, I visited Paraguay and bought a newspaper, ABC Color, published in the capital, Asuncion.
On page 42, an article caught my eye: "Menor sometida a operacion ilegal en San Ignacio se debate entre la vida y la muerte."
Photos showed an obstetrician, Rosa Nunez, showing where a fetus had been buried outside her home and a police officer digging up the remains. The report says Rosa had admitted doing "clandestine abortions." ("La functionaria reconocio que practica abortos en forma clandestina.")
Suddenly I was no longer an innocent tourist. I realized I was in a country where abortion is illegal, where a mother who finds that her 16-year-old daughter is pregnant has only two choices: providing support as her child becomes a mother or finding someone who will risk performing an illegal abortion at home.
I remembered that safe, legal abortions are not available in Mexico, Latin Americ, and South America except to save a woman's life. In a few countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay), abortions can also be done if a woman's health is in danger or perhaps if the fetus is impaired, and in 2005 Brazil passed a law permitting abortion for rape victims.
In the United States we are fighting to keep abortion legal and to ensure availability as opponents find an increasing number of ways to limit access. But in the southern hemisphere millions of women have only two choies when contraception fails or is not available: keeping the baby or risking their lives while breaking the law.
As the mother of three daughters, my heart goes out to this mother, Maria Riveros, who tried to help her daughter end a pregnancy. The fetus turned out to be about four months along; the extraction had to be performed by dismembering it.
The sixteen-year-old (identified only as V.R.) experienced severe pain during the following 24 hours, so Maria took her back to the Rosa Nunez, who sent them to the nearest hospital. A hysterectomy was performed but the girl's life was still in danger.
Soon a police officer was excavating the fetus and charging Rosa and her daughter, a nurse who had assisted, with the crime of performing an abortion.
Note to any prolife readers: if you succeed in making abortion illegal again in the US, this scenario will be taking place here again.
See also:
http://www.abc.com.py/
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