Bid to Ease Chile's Abortion Ban Hits Roadblock

Chile's Chamber of Deputies fell one vote short of passing the Senate version of a bill aimed at easing the country's strict abortion law on Thursday, a surprise setback to for President Michelle Bachelet's center-left coalition and campaign groups.

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"History could have been changed. We just needed one vote to avoid what happened," center-left lawmaker Marco Antonio Nunez said in a television interview.

The day before, the Senate narrowly passed the bill that would legalize abortion when a woman's life is in danger, when a fetus is unviable or when a pregnancy results from rape.

The lower chamber — which passed an earlier version of the bill over a year ago — was expected to approve the modifications made by the Senate.

"Approving a proposal to allow voluntary terminations of pregnancies is part of a more equal Chile for women."

That effort failed when one of the more conservative lawmakers in Bachelet's center-left coalition abstained: Marcelo Chavez, from the Christian Democrat Party. Other lawmakers were on vacation, leaving the government one vote short of the 67 needed for it to be passed — with 66 votes in favor, 40 against and one abstention.

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The bill will now go through a messy reconciliation process that could take weeks. Abortion rights advocates fear the final version may pass after a change in the composition of Chile's Constitutional Court scheduled for late August, which is expected to make it more conservative.

That change could be critical, as the conservative opposition has pledged to challenge the abortion bill in the court.

Chile is one of only a handful of countries worldwide where abortion is illegal without exception. The ban was put in place during the last days of Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 dictatorship. Bachelet pledged to reform it when she took office for the second time in 2014 but has faced heavy pushback from the conservative opposition.

But although Chile is one of Latin America's more socially conservative countries and is still heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, opinion polls show about 70 percent of Chileans favor easing the abortion ban.

Under the current law, abortion is punishable by up to five years in prison.

However, about 30,000 provoked or spontaneous terminations are recorded each year in the country. According to a pro-choice group, the number of clandestine abortions could be as high as 160,000,