El acompañamiento feminista de las comadres como estrategia hacia la despenalización del aborto en el Ecuador.

Abstract

In Ecuador, abortion is legal in three causes: when the woman's life is in danger with the continuation of the pregnancy; if it involves a health risk; and, when the pregnancy has been the product of rape. As established in Art. 150 of the Criminal Code and in Sentence 34-19-IN of the Constitutional Court dated April 29, 2021. In Ecuador, an estimated 87,000 unintended pregnancies per year; of which 53%, that is 46,000, conclude in abortions (MSP, 2017). The vast majority are carried out in conditions of secrecy and risk, added to the consequences of the stigma culturally associated with abortion. The existence of feminist organizations that defend the right to abortion and the strategies implemented such as 'accompaniment' is a way of subverting the patriarchal and capitalist order of control over the bodies and autonomous decisions of women and, at the same time, consolidates joint processes that give collective responses to these legal, institutional, and cultural impediments, in such a way that they make possible other stories about the decision and the experience of abortion. This work has been carried out by collecting primary and secondary information and from the very experience of being a companion in abortions, which allows me to characterize the political proposal of feminist accompaniment, analyzed from the sociological theories of social movements and feminist theories about sexuality, justice, resistance.