Abortion Is a Basic Human Right



By Carmen Angélina Valenzuela, AlterNet
Posted on July 11, 2006, Printed on July 12, 2006
<http://www.alternet.org/story/38763/>http://www.alternet.org/story/38763/


Amnesty International is in the midst of considering whether to include 
access to abortion in the list of rights that it supports. Many other 
organizations and individuals have long made the case that access to safe 
abortion services is a basic human right, one that saves thousands of 
women's lives and protects the health of many, many more.

While the US and New Zealand have voted in favor, members in other nations 
are in the process of consulting and voting on the proposal. While the 
final decision won't be made until the end of next year, this debate is 
long overdue.

As 70,000 women die each year around the world as a direct result of unsafe 
abortion, and 600,000 more are seriously injured, human rights activists 
should move quickly to ensure that Amnesty makes this historic decision. As 
somebody who is aware of the impact that Amnesty can have on governments, I 
will be doing my utmost to support the proposal.

On February 10, 1990--the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 
South Africa--I was kidnapped by the Guatemalan government's notorious G-2 
intelligence unit. For eight days, I was bound, beaten and physically and 
psychologically tortured in an attempt to gain information about the 
guerilla movement that I simply did not have. Like many of my medical 
colleagues, I had supported the opposition in Guatemala, providing medical 
supplies and emergency assistance to those who opposed the regime. But that 
was the extent of my support, I knew nothing that would interest my 
interrogators.

I was one of the few who survived my incarceration. Most were executed and 
then dumped in public places as a warning to others. But, due to an 
incredible campaign on my behalf, locally and internationally, I somehow 
was released; not unharmed, but alive. The tipping point for the security 
forces may have been a threatened national strike by the medical 
profession, but Amnesty International's immediate response also meant that 
the case was attracting international attention.

After I fled the country, I lived in New York and became closely involved 
in working with refugees--especially on the reproductive health needs of 
women fleeing war, torture and poverty.

At the time I left, Guatemala was coming to the end of the first 
democratically elected government. While some things had got better, others 
had stayed the same, and the vicious clampdown on all opposition continued. 
In my work as a pediatrician, I was in close contact with the results of 
immense government funding for an internal war, and little if any for the 
services required to run a small impoverished country. The lack of maternal 
health services lead to many deaths in childbirth, and many malnourished 
and sick children.

Through my work with the poor in Guatemala, it became increasingly apparent 
to me that all human rights advocates must, as a matter of high concern, 
support all women in their decisions whether or not to become or remain 
pregnant. In Guatemala, the subject of abortion never came up. It was 
practiced clandestinely, and I, like all health professionals, saw 
first-hand the after-effects of illegal abortion. No woman should be forced 
to go to such lengths to end a pregnancy that she cannot continue.

Reproductive rights in general and the right to end a pregnancy through 
abortion must become a basic part of the human rights canon. As a medical 
professional, a women's rights activist and somebody who has experienced 
first hand the positive impact that human-rights campaigners can have, I 
can clearly see the direct connection between Amnesty International's 
existing campaigns and the discussion about including abortion rights in 
future campaigns.

On the day I write this, I read that Amnesty International again has issued 
an alert about human rights abuses in my home country. On this day too, and 
every day, women who cannot gain access to safe abortion services are 
injured, made seriously ill, and die as a result of their inability to 
access a basic human right. Amnesty's decision to move from its current 
neutral position to one that supports women's rights to safe abortion is 
one that women around the world who cannot easily access such services will 
applaud.

Dr. Carmen Angélina Valenzuela, a pediatrician, is senior program officer 
in the International Department at Catholics for a Free Choice and a 
commissioner of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women & Children.

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