The institutionalization of abortion as a mechanism of oppression of women’s rights
We consider that one of the most important current problems that directly affect us in our status as women is the submission of our body and decisions before institutions such as the Church, the State, the Society, and the patriarchy. In spite of the advances that have been achieved with the feminist struggle, the fact of existing in a country with strongly religious and conservative traditions has generated that the differences of the bodies be visible and reproduced, which leads to different valuations of these.
From this, we consider that abortion is the current practice that most allows to see these differentiations of the bodies, since from its debate it is possible to observe the different devices that make it up. Understanding the term of devices from Foucault as the relationship or network of knowledge/power between different components or institutional elements, which is temporarily located in a given context, so it allows to modify or maintain power relations (García, 2011).
This whole process of knowledge/power networks are established in society through institutionalization and habituation, which according to Berger and Lukman (as cited in Robertazi, 2008), are found in all human activity, since this issubject to habituation, which precedes the institutionalization, such as the reciprocal typification of actions accustomed by different types of actors, which subject to social control the actions of a specific group of people. This institutionalization requires legitimation as a way of being able to explain and justify in the common sense of people’s social reality. This can be observed in the definition of Judith Butler (2002) of sex, since this is used as a regulatory practice that manifests itself in the productive power of the bodies that are controlled, so that ‘the regulatory norms of the’ sex ‘workin a performative way to establish the materiality of the bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the sex of the body, to materialize sexual difference ‘, which leads to the difference in opinions in the debate on abortion.
In this sense, it is explained because for Butler (2019) "the issue of abortion is key because it raises the question of who belongs to the body, who has power over the bodies". Since this materialization of sexual difference allows us to understand how the power of a few with particular interests on the body and decisions of women, through the use of language, and laws as constructive methods of society andstatus quo.
From this, you can see how the State put within its laws a Christian morality, so when a woman who decides to ignore the law and decides with her own autonomy ends up being criminalized. What ends up forcing women to a reproductive act through the power of the State and the Church (Butler, 2019). This indiscriminate use of power ends up forcing an unwanted pregnancy in a woman, where an individual was born in an environment without love or protection, which can never experience a propitious mother-son bond, which ends up generating irreversible damage in the person, which will end up reproducing in the rest of its interpersonal relationships, thus causing the reproduction of this damage at a social and cultural level.
All this damage could be avoided if institutions did not exert an oppressive force on a decision that must be typical of women, and this interest in children’s lives, will perch on those who are alive and in greater danger situations andnegligence. Because at the moment when the woman is forced to make a decision between an unwanted pregnancy and the illegality, she decides in favor of what she considers best for her, which can trigger in a series of negative events for the life ofthe woman. This is observable according to the 2017 World Congress, where it is stated that:
‘The consequences of clandestine abortions, and often insecure, predominantly affect women in countries with highly restrictive laws, which are concentrated in developing regions (…). In countries with highly restrictive laws where access to misoprostol is poor, abortion in unsafe conditions remains the main option available for many women, especially poor women. But once these countries expand the legal basis for abortion and implement access to safe and legal abortion services, the resource to clandestine and insecure abortions generally decreases. However, in societies where restrictive laws and stigma persist, women tend to prioritize the secret on health, with consequences that have an impact on the individual, family and national levels. The prevalence and severity of these consequences vary according to environments, and also according to the economic resources and social circumstances of women ’(Singh, Remez, Sedgh, Kwok & Wave, 2018).
From which it can be understood as the institutionalization of the interests of the Church and the government in the woman’s body, they generate that in society it is often prioritized that the woman born biologically as such, fill the role of mother, mother,rather than allowing this to develop in other areas such as academic, sexual, politicians and work, among others.
This establishment of the status quo of duty to be and make the woman, who visualizes her only as a means of reproduction, which she must then take care of and dedicate her life entirely to her children, has generated over time a series of reflections and social ruptures aboutThe ‘must be’ of the role of women in society, according to what you want, and what the Church dictates. Based on the above, resistance movements arise against this oppression. It can be said that since the emergence of feminist movements in Colombia, the need to talk about unwanted pregnancy and abortion arises, according to the newspaper of the newspaper El Tiempo: the historical decisions that have changed abortion in Colombia, can be evidenced As is spoken for the first time of the penalty of abortion with article 343 of Decree 100 of 1980, where it was explained that if the woman aborted or allowed another (s) to practice an abortion, they would be imprisoned from 1 to 3 years, but Then a pioneering act in Latin America was generated, in 2006 the voluntary interruption of pregnancy is allowed under the three causal causal: when it is a risk to the woman’s (physical or mental) health, when pregnancy is the product of a violation or incest or when the fetus comes with malformations that make its life incompatible, although clearly from this decree, social mobilizations arise and against decision and in one In 2008, the T-209, the guidelines of the ‘conscientious objection’ were given and it was required that doctors should redirect patients to specialized centers where the procedure should be practiced, from this moment multiple struggles have been generated So that abortion is increasing This practice: denied the time limit, recalled that doctors decide the possibility of abortion in health -related causes and assured that the 46 barriers identified for abortion constitute an act of violence against women, and currently, in the year 2020 The Constitutional Court declared itself prevented to penalize abortion in its entirety or decriminalize abortion beyond the three causes.
Finally, and from the above, we can observe how the establishment of this form of differentiation of the bodies generates that the value of the life of women in the eyes of society is decreed, and that the roles established toThe woman rather than her right to decide on her own body. Which is why we consider that a change in social institutionalizations is necessary, to give priority to the choice of women over their own body through the establishment of legal, safe and free abortion, set with the improvement of the scope and content of theSexual education, to prevent this type of unwanted pregnancies, which are usually more common in women with low strata, being more exposed to ignorance of their sexual and reproductive rights and contraceptive methods that they can use to regulate their sexuality.
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