Columbia gives women back their lives

Colombia's highest court on Wednesday voted 5-3 to effectively legalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, to save the life of the woman or when the fetus is expected to die after birth because of severe fetal abnormalities, the AP/Washington Post reports.

This is a huge victory for the lives of Columbia's women.

Women's Link Worldwide, which filed a lawsuit to legalize abortion in the country, said Colombia's laws banning abortion infringe on a woman's right to life and health as mandated by international treaties to which Colombia has agreed.

Under the ruling, abortion in all other cases still will carry a sentence of up to three years in jail for the woman undergoing abortion and for the doctor performing the procedure, according to the AP/Post.

Criminalization is still a problem, where women are chained to hospital beds during treatment of unsafe, illegal abortion complications and hauled off before healing completely.

According to the New York Times, the ruling will be difficult to implement because health authorities do not know how they will confirm a woman seeking abortion is a rape or incest survivor.

The court on Thursday said it made the ruling because a fetus' life could not be more important than the life of a pregnant woman, adding that the law banning abortion in all instances was "disproportionate" and "irrational".

As many as 400,000 illegal abortions occur annually in Columbia, the majority of which are performed in "unsanitary, clandestine clinics," according to the AP/Post.

El Salvador and Chile now are the only countries in Latin America that ban abortion in all circumstances, BBC News reports.

And we all know the Reich vipers hold these countries as a fetal utopia.