Another major topic of discussion lately has been the recent Chilean Supreme Court ruling on the day-after pill. President Bachelet, formerly a pediatrician, made the day-after pill available to poor women for free through the public health system soon after she came into office. However, this decision came under fierce criticism from the Right. The conservative-leaning Supreme Court ruled last week that the pill will no longer be available for free at public clinics (i.e., for the poor).
The Court used the scientifically-unfounded argument presented by a group of conservative Congressmen that the pill constitutes an abortion. As we all know (I hope!), the day after pill is in fact a form of contraception, preventing ovulation and fertilization. It is particularly necessary to have an emergency contraceptive available in a country like Chile, where abortion is illegal in all cases, including in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.
Wealthy women can fly to Miami to have an abortion, but poor women are forced to carry out the pregnancy or seek an illegal back-alley abortion. In fact, the abortion rate in Chile is far higher than in the United States or Europe. I´ve read estimates of 150,000-200,000 illegal abortions a year. That is, one in twenty women have an abortion every year in a country where abortion is illegal. This is one of the highest abortion rates in the world.(In contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal, the rate is about one in 50 women.)
Illegal abortions are expensive and dangerous. Women pay more than the monthly minimum wage to procure an abortion, and it´s estimated that about one in five of these women will end up in the hospital for what should be a safe and relatively simple procedure. Doctors and nurses may report these women to the police, and they can face three to five years in jail. It´s completely out of sync with Chile´s reputation as a relatively progressive highly developed developing country, and certainly provides an arresting example of what life could be like without Roe.
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