The Justice and Human Rights Commission of the Peruvian Congress has filed this Wednesday the bill that would decriminalize abortion in cases of rape.
With 12 votes against, only one vote in favor and four abstentions, the commission rejected the bill presented by Congresswoman Ruth Luque of the Juntos por el Perú party.
The president of the working group, Américo Gonza Castillo, of the Peru Libre party, indicated during the debate that the committee requested the opinion of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, but did not receive any reply from them, according to the newspaper ‘La República’.
In response, Congresswoman Luque affirmed that the Church should not be asked for its opinion in order to legislate. «Who defines public policies is the State, we are a secular State and that has not changed,» he reiterated.
The text proposed to incorporate to the Peruvian Penal Code the text in which it is specified that «abortion practiced by a doctor with the consent of the pregnant woman or her legal representative is not punishable when the pregnancy is the result of rape».
In this line, the legislator had requested the change in the article of the Penal Code that indicated the penalties for performing abortions in case of rape.
The congresswoman, after learning of the rejection of her bill, has assured that women’s struggles will persist and machismo will remain only as «a bad memory», as she posted on her Twitter profile.
Thus, she has assured that they will not allow any man to claim the right to impose his ideological beliefs on women’s rights, in response to the words of the third vice president of the Peruvian Congress, Alejandro Muñante, who has spoken out against the bill, considering that «behind the decriminalization, is its legalization without any cause».
The deputy previously explained that this regulation would recognize the right of girls, adolescents and women to have a life free of violence and prevent the victim from «an imposed or forced maternity».
