Abortion Bill in Chile Sparks War on Credibility, Moral Authority

Opposing sides in the bid to legalize abortion in the South-American country are using current scandals to drive home their point.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Opposing sides in Chile’s bid to legalize abortion are using an indicted pedophile priest and the corrupt son of a ruling president to make their cases.

The scandalous events are being cited in the context of the fierce political debate that has been triggered by the introduction earlier this year of legislation seeking to legalize abortion in some circumstances.

Currently, the wealthy South-American country has the most openly pro-life legislation in the region, thanks to a constitutional amendment that establishes the right to life from the moment of conception and allows no exceptions for any type of abortions.

But the current socialist President Michelle Bachelet, making good on her promise during her electoral campaign last year, presented a bill on Jan. 31 aimed at legalizing abortion in Chile in three scenarios: rape, “fetal infeasibility” and “vital risk to the mother.”

According to the bill, in cases of rape, women would be allowed to have an abortion up to 12 weeks, but minors 14 years old or younger would qualify for an abortion up to 18 weeks. In cases of rape, abortion would be allowed for minors without parental consent.

The law would permit medical practitioners with “conscientious objection” to refrain from performing abortions.

Under Chile’s current law, which stems back to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1974-1990), women who seek abortions face up to five years in prison, although this law has rarely been enforced.

In a nationally televised speech introducing the bill, Bachelet said that the law was not aimed at opening the door to all types of abortion. “We are just offering support to women in very painful moments [with this legislation], because it is intolerable to punish women who find themselves in this difficult position with prison.”

But according to Patricia Gonelle, director of Proyecto Esperanza (Project Hope), the largest crisis-pregnancy organization in Chile, “The whole project is just a charade to legalize all forms of abortion.”

“The bill, instead of talking about the risk to the mother’s life, talks about ‘the mother’s health,’” Gonelle told the Register. “What do they mean by ‘health’? We know that, for the World Health Organization, the definition of health is not just the presence or absence of an illness, but the ‘sensation of well-being.’”

“Under the bill’s current wording, any abortion could be legal, since any woman in any circumstance can argue that a pregnancy opposes her ‘well-being,’” Gonelle explained.

 

The Debate Heats Up

After the month-long summer recess in February, the Chilean Congress, currently controlled by a slight majority of Bachelet’s “New Majority” political alliance, comprised of socially and politically liberal parties, will start deliberating the bill.

But during the usually slow month of February, the public square in the nation was inundated by a ferocious debate around abortion.

While Bachelet was vacationing in southern Chile, socialist Congressman Marcelo Schilling threatened “nationalizing” Catholic universities and hospitals opposed to abortion in retaliation for their pledge that abortions would never be allowed at Catholic health-care facilities; and the usually mild-spoken Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, archbishop of Santiago and president of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference, called the laity to “fight and get organized.”

The debate even spilled into Chile’s top summer music festival of Viña del Mar, where the winning duet of racy comedians, “Dinamita Show,” finished their act with the shout, “Say No to abortion!”  

“I know that the laypeople of Chile are organizing to proclaim what our faith says about life and our conviction to defend it. I am very happy that the laypeople are assuming their responsibilities and are ready to take on this fight,” Cardinal Ezatti told ACI Prensa, the Catholic news agency in Spanish that is part of EWTN.

His statement was picked up by most of the Chilean secular press, sparking a wave of attacks against the Catholic Church for “moral hypocrisy,” bringing to the discussion the relatively recent scandal of a popular Catholic priest.

Father Fernando Karadima, one of the most revered priests in Chile, was declared guilty of sexual abuse of minors in January 2011, after several denunciations of former victims who forced an investigation by the Archdiocese of Santiago and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican.

The debacle of Father Karadima, a popular priest among the Chilean elite and a mentor to numerous priests and bishops, was one of the hardest blows for the Church’s credibility in the country.

“The Church should worry about cleaning its own house of pedophiles rather than messing with politics,” declared Congressman Schilling to Radio Cooperativa on Feb. 21.

 

Financial Scandal

Yet the government and its supporters have become the targets of a much newer credibility issue related to a financial scandal involving Bachelet’s oldest son, Sebastián Dávalos. The political magazine Qué Pasa revealed that Dávalos, 36, and his wife, Natalia Compagnon, received a loan of $10 million from one of Chile’s richest men to invest in a real-estate project in an area whose value would have gone up after the development of a government program. Dávalos was director of the cultural office of the presidency, and the government project was not yet public.

The scandal does not bode well for the president’s already-struggling approval rankings. According to the independent polling company CADEM, Bachelet’s popularity dropped nine points in the last week. The president’s current approval is at 35%.

The aide to a pro-life congressman, who spoke to the Register on condition of anonymity, explained that Bachelet’s fall in the polls “is very relevant to the abortion debate,” since “it will make it almost impossible for her politically to attach an urgent tag to the bill.”

A presidential “urgent” designation on a bill would force congress to spend no more than a month for a debate and an additional 15 days for a final vote. According to the source, “Bachelet was planning on signing the abortion legalization before her [yearly] address to the nation,” on March 21.

The same source explained that pro-life congressmen have decided to break the bill into three different votes, one for each one of the abortion “exceptions” Bachelet is seeking.

“There are several evangelical and Catholic congressmen within the government’s coalition who are not willing to open the door to unrestricted abortion and thus oppose the most extreme exceptions,” the source said.

 

Consequences

Organizations that oppose the drive to legalize abortion in Chile cite a 2012 study that contradicts claims by pro-abortion lobbyists that criminalizing abortion had a negative impact on maternal health. The study, conducted by University of Chile epidemiologist Elard Koch, reported that maternal deaths in the nation actually declined by almost 70% after abortion was prohibited in 1989.

Pro-life leaders say these facts make the outcome of the political debate even more crucial.

“Whatever happens in congress is going to be a consequence of whatever happens in our culture and our society,” said Elizabeth Bunster, a mother of seven and the leader of the pro-life organization Chile es Vida.

Bunster told the Register, “We are fighting so that Chile’s traditional compassion, sense of justice and love for life may prevail.”

Alejandro Bermudez is the executive director

of Catholic News Agency and ACI Prensa.

He is also the Register’s Latin-America correspondent.