For nearly three years, Costa Rica has been committed to develop a technical standard for the regularization of therapeutic abortion, an action that has been regulated for 50 years in the Criminal Code but does not currently have a regulation that rigorously dictates the steps to follow when it’s strictly necessary.
The draft of the Technical Standard was prepared by a commission headed by the Ministry of Health and transferred to the General Chancellery of the Republic that was to present it to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH).
However, the previous week the Acceder Citizen Association denounced that the Costa Rican Government violated human rights again, because on April 24th it was announced that due to a political decision, the promise made by Luis Guillermo Solís would not be fulfilled.
The negotiations for the creation of the norm began with the case of two women: Ana and Aurora who presented their situation before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. They were denied therapeutic abortion to which they were entitled based on current national regulations and were forced to sustain pregnancies that were unviable due to malformations incompatible with extra-uterine life.
From there, Costa Rica started in the process of friendly negotiation, so there is no possibility that the country will be sanctioned if it does not approve the norm.