Discursive continuities and ruptures over the total criminalization of abortion in El Salvador: An analysis of parliamentary and Supreme Court discourses.

MARÍA ANGELICA PEÑAS DEFAGO

Ciudad de México

Congreso; 2017 International Metting on Law and Society; 2017

Law and Society Association

In 1997, the Salvadorean Penal Code was reformed to specify a total ban on abortion on the grounds of the defense of the absolute character of life since conception. Shortly afterwards , the national Constitution was modified to include protection for life since conception, an amendment which reinforced the country?s new criminalizing model. The approval of these reforms meant that different legal, moral, biological and religious discourses began to circulate.A decade later, the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice became one of the arenas chosen by diverse social actors to dispute the legality of the total criminalization system on the basis of the defense of women?s rights to life, health, dignity and integrity. All the constitutional challenges presented aimed at overturning total criminalization have been rejected by the Court. Through different discursive turns the Court has determined that the right to life since conception -established as part of the Constitution in 1999 ? trumps women?s rights. Despite not having declared total criminalization unconstitutional in any of the cases presented, the Court has determined that a system like El Salvador?s could eventually lead to a conflicts of interests between the ?mother? and the nasciturus, conflicts which it deems should be resolved by representative bodies of the state and not by the courts. These public discussions about abortion in El Salvador signal diverse discursive turns, such as the determination of the absolute rights of the nasciturus, which are set out to justify the legal regulation of women?s bodies and sexuality. This paper analyzes the framings, continuities and ruptures of discourses about abortion in El Salvador, both in the Llegislative Aassembly during the 1990s, and in the Constitutional Chamber?s sentences to date. It will focus on the parliamentary debates around the 1997 reform of the Penal Code and those at the time of the votes over the constitutional reform that incorporated the right to life since conception (1997-1999). At the same time, it analyzes discourses within the Supreme Court during the four debates when the Court has determined the constitutionality of the absolute ban on abortion. By analyzing these discourses in public state arenas, the paper aims to understand the permeability and plasticity of legal, moral, social and religious discourses emitted by the Supreme Court and the Legislative Assembly in the key moments selected.