Lawyer seeks to overturn abortion ban in Colombia

WASHINGTON - Monica Roa has been the victim of death threats and burglaries and even accused of plotting genocide. Bodyguards travel with her everywhere. But she refuses to back down.

The 29-year-old lawyer is the centre of an effort to overhaul abortion in Colombia, which has one of the most restrictive laws in Latin America.

Chile, El Salvador, Honduras and Suriname also ban abortion. Brazil forbids it except in rape or severe danger to the mother's life.

Roa's opponents are the most senior figures within the Catholic church, hugely powerful in a country where more than 90 per cent of the population is Catholic. She said her campaign to change the law was also undermined by the United States Government's controversial "Mexico City" policy that bans overseas aid for groups that support abortion.

"It's been crucial," Roa said from Bogota. "I have had lots of people saying they support what I am doing but they cannot say so publicly. They lose their funding from US aid [US Agency for International Development] that goes to other projects in Colombia."

The US policy was introduced in the 1970s, suspended by President Bill Clinton but reinstated by President George W. Bush.

Profamilia Colombia, one of the country's largest family-planning groups, used to be an outspoken critic of the country's abortion ban. These days, dependent for half of its funding on the US, the group refuses to comment.

Social Welfare Ministry figures show that about 300,000 illegal abortions are performed every year in the country. Roa said these "backstreet abortions" were the third-highest cause of mortality for women in Colombia.

Roa, who works for international women's group Women's Link Worldwide, crafted her proposal to gain as much support as possible. Though she supports widespread access to abortions, her lawsuit seeks only to change the law to make the procedure legal when a woman has been raped, her life is at risk or if the fetus has deformations "incompatible with life outside the womb".

Jose Galat, the rector of the Roman Catholic Great Colombia University, likened abortion to the massacres during the country's ongoing civil war. "How can we denounce crimes by the illegal armed groups if we make it legal for a mother to murder her unborn child. We lose all legitimacy."

Galat said Roa's opponents had submitted a two-million-signature petition to the Constitutional Court urging magistrates to maintain the existing laws. The court is expected to rule within two months.

- INDEPENDENT