Will Women’s Rights Take a Backseat to the Economic After-Shocks of Chilean Quake?

The 8.8 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunamis that hit the coast of Chile on February 27th left more than 700 people dead and hundreds of thousands more without homes, food, and water.  With an estimated $30 billion in economic damage, Chilean President-elect Sebastian Piñera will have his hands full as he tries to lead the country into recovery when he takes office in two weeks. The question is whether the new president will be able to balance the effects of Saturday’s devastation with his victory speech’s dedication to transform Chile “into the best country in the world” by focusing on women’s rights, particularly taking up the long-standing problem of teenage pregnancy.
Since 1990, the GDP has increased each year with the exception of two global recessions, and the poverty rate has been cut in half. While the economic impact of the earthquake’s damage will be a severe setback, for long term prosperity to be achieved in Chile, women’s rights must be given more attention and a greater sense of urgency—especially in areas of inequality and the right to health.
Despite much progress in health sectors, Chile continues to be plagued by increasing teenage pregnancies, most of which occur among the lowest socio-economic classes. According to Daniel Estrada’s article “CHILE: Teen Pregnancy, a Problem That Won’t Go Away”, of the 248,694 live births at the beginning of the decade, “1,054 children were born of mothers under 15 and 39,216 [born] of mothers in the 15-19 age range”. Much of this phenomenon can be attributed to a failure by the government to realize the right to health without discrimination for socio-economic status or gender.
Paragraph eight of the UN General Comment No. 14 states that “the right to health is not to be understood as a right to be healthy”.  Instead, according to article 12.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the right to health may be defined as “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”. Previous declarations have also categorized the right to health as a social goal closely related to human development in terms of “enlarging people’s choices to live a long and healthy life, to acquire knowledge and to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living” (UNDP).
Two of the essential elements of the right to health are not being met with regard to teen pregnancy in Chile: availability of services and accessibility in terms of information and affordability. In Chile, abortion is illegal with no recourse even if the mother’s life is in danger. The Education Ministry’s conservative ideological views skew and limit not only access to, but also the content of sexual education for adolescents and teenagers.  Moreover, in April of 2006, the Chilean Constitutional Court banned the free distribution of emergency contraception—or the “morning-after pill”—despite President Bachelet’s fight to ensure access for those girls from the lowest socio-economic sectors where only 30% claimed to use any form of birth control.  According to Estrada, not only do teenage pregnancies carry great health risks, they also “perpetuate poverty and gender inequalities”.  Most of these young girls are forced to drop out of school to care for their babies, increasing the financial burden on their parents, or left to fend for themselves with no viable way of making money to support themselves.
How will President-Elect Piñera weigh-in on this issue? Previously an advocate of the ban on free emergency contraception, Piñera changed his stance during the election but holds fast to his opposition to abortion, even if the mother’s life is at risk.   A recent Bloomberg article by Michael Smith and Sebastian Boyd, quotes Piñera as saying “I have condemned human rights violations all my life, with no hesitation.  Human rights are sacred. Our government will be a government of the future.”  His stand on therapeutic abortion is in direct violation of the right to maternal, child and reproductive health as outlined in the G.C. 14, article 12.2(a) which “may be understood as requiring measures to improve child and maternal health, sexual and reproductive services, including access to family planning, pre-and post natal care, emergency obstetric services and access to information, as well as to resources necessary to act on that information”.
With a Ph.D in Economics from Harvard and a proven track record in building financially successful and highly profitable companies in the airline industry, financial sector, media, and sports, the new Chilean president should be right at home juggling the economic challenges that will arise from the earthquake’s far reaching damage. The Development and Human Rights community can only hope that Piñera won’t use the disaster as an excuse to shift focus away from the very pressing and often controversial basic rights of the Chilean people.

Estradam Daniel. “CHILE: Teen Pregnancy, a Problem That Won’t Go Away.” IPSNews, 2009. Web. 28 February 2010. http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49106

Smith, Michael and Boyd, Sebastian. “Pinera Eschews Pinochet Terror Promoting Dictator’s Economic.” Bloomberg. 2010. Web. 28 February 2010. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aa3E2kuB7x_U&pos=13

© 2010, ElizabethGilbert. All rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 11:05 PM and is filed under 2010, 2nd Article, Gender Equity, Public, WPHR Students. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.