Chilean president fighting uphill battle to legalize some abortions in wake of teen's near death, arrest

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is fighting fierce conservative opposition to allow abortion for women and girls who are raped, carrying non-viable fetuses or facing life-threatening pregnancy complications.

Last month, a 17-year-old girl turned up at a Santiago public hospital near death from bleeding. A doctor at the hospital called police to report her: she had had a back-alley abortion, which is illegal in Chile.

Police searched the girl’s home and reported finding blood-stained underwear. Prosecutors say that she is facing 3.5 to five years in prison.

In recent years, cases like hers, or that of Belen, an 11-year-old raped by her stepfather, have rocked Chile’s traditional and overwhelmingly Roman Catholic society.

Others like journalist Monica Perez have to go forward with a pregnancy knowing full well the baby would not live.

The socialist president, a pediatrician by training, has announced that she will try in her second term to take on an admittedly taboo issue in one of the few countries where abortion is not permitted under any circumstances.

“Chile needs to engage in a mature and informed dialogue… on a bill” in Congress to legalize abortion in cases of rape, risk to the patient’s life and non-viable fetuses, Bachelet has said.

Bachelet’s proposal “includes three situations that are quite extreme, and (most national) laws around the world already include them,” said Cristobal Bellolio, an analyst at Universidad Adolfo Ibanez.