Chile: President Gabriel Boric announces that he will present a bill to legalize free abortion

“As president, I am convinced of holding a democratic debate on sexual and reproductive rights and, despite the fact that some male deputies are opposed, during the second half of this year we will present a legal abortion bill,” said Boric, during his accountability speech before the National Congress, in Valparaíso, 110 kilometers northwest of the capital.

Chile decriminalized abortion in 2017, during the second term of former socialist president Michelle Bachelet, and approved a law that allows the voluntary interruption of pregnancy on three grounds (risk for the mother, fetal infeasibility and rape), although feminist movements denounce that Many obstacles still remain for its full implementation.

In that sense, Boric indicated that the Government introduced a new regulation to “improve the application” of the law, which seeks to “guarantee that the population knows its options, ensure a right that is established in the law, that the objection of conscience does not hinder these three causes and that the place where one lives and the ability to pay are not a barrier.

Until 2017, voluntary terminations of pregnancy were completely criminalized, something established by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) shortly before the general left power.

Boric’s announcement this Saturday aroused loud applause among those attending the Public Account, but also boos from right-wing parliamentarians, who are currently the majority in Congress.

Since the approval of the law of the three causes, the debate to expand the law and approve free abortion has been reopened from time to time, but the right is frontally opposed to this and surveys show that society is divided.