Having waited more than 520 days for the decision of Colombia’s constitutional court, on 21 February we finally received the news we were hoping for. The court ruled that abortion, if performed within the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, is no longer a criminal offence.
The court’s ruling was in response to a case brought by Causa Justa (‘righteous cause’), an umbrella movement for more than 100 groups and thousands of activists across Colombia – including Women’s Link Worldwide, where I work as a lawyer. To get this far required so much creativity, courage and collaborative effort, and none of it would have been possible without the wide mix of people in the movement.
Before 2006, there was an absolute ban on abortion in Colombia. That year, again following a lawsuit from Women’s Link, abortion was decriminalised – but only in three circumstances: if the woman’s life or health was at risk, if there were fatal foetal abnormalities, or if the pregnancy was the result of rape. But this did not reduce the number of prosecutions for abortion; in fact, official figures show that the vast majority of the criminal abortion cases from 1998 to 2019 (5,737 in total) occurred after 2006.
