ACI Prensa Staff, Sep 26, 2023 / 18:50 pm
After getting approval from the medical board of the National Maternal Perinatal Institute of Lima (INMP), a “therapeutic” abortion was performed on a girl under 11 years of age who became pregnant as a result of alleged abuse committed by her stepfather in the Áncash region of northern Peru.
The case, which is very similar to another that occurred in August, has created a great deal of controversy. Carlos Polo, director of the Latin American Office of the Population Research Institute, believes that abortion organizations are using situations like these to push for legalized abortion in Peru.
“It is no coincidence that several cases with the same characteristics come up in a short period of time and they all end up in the same place [the INMP] and in the same way,” Polo told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “This leads us to think that these cases of ‘express abortion’ are not isolated events. They are the tactic of a plan to expand the ‘therapeutic’ abortion protocol to cases of rape, abortion for minors, congenital fetal deformities, and mental health.”
Although abortion remains a crime, Article 119 of the Penal Code states that “it is not punishable” when “it is the only means to save the life of the pregnant woman or to avoid serious and permanent harm to her health.” Likewise, in 2014 the executive branch approved the guide for doing therapeutic abortions, which allows the procedure up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.