Reproductive Healthcare

"For most women, including women who want to have children, contraception is not an option; it is a basic health care necessity."

-Louise Slaughter

Reproductive healthcare is not only a fundamental right but an issue that impacts a lot of women and men in Peru due to inequality. The objective is to give Peruvians the possibility to decide how to protect their health and to plan their family's future. Although maternal deaths in Peru have reduced to 500 in 2017, our country has four girls under the age of 15 that give birth every day and a 13% of teenage pregnancies (WHO, 2019) (UNFPA, 2018) (UNFPA Peru, 2019). Still, 9 out of 10 persons of legal age and a similar proportion of students would like integral sexual education in Peruvian schools (UNFPA Peru, n/d). Regarding Peruvian policies on reproductive health, there are no national normative within the law that backup an integral sexual education program, and only therapeutic abortion are legal (Motta, 2017) (CRR, 2011). In short, Peru has issues to overcome to achieve reproductive healthcare for every citizen.

The UN's actions related to reproductive healthcare in Peru are significant and known around the globe. In 2005 the United Nations Human Rights Committee was the first international human rights body to hold a government accountable for failing to guarantee access to legal abortion services. The UNHR ordered the Peruvian government to provide Karen Llantoy with reparations and to adopt regulations that guarantee access to legal abortion. That event caused Peru to approve a therapeutic abortion protocol in 2014 and legislative attempts to expand and restrict the grounds for legal abortion (CRR, 2015) (Gianella, 2017). Also, the Constitutional Court issued banning the distribution of EOC in 2009 in public healthcare centers (Gianella, 2017). For reproductive healthcare measures to improve in Peru, the country has to focus on the protection of women. The UN assures that access to abortion and prevention of maternal mortality are human rights (CRR, 2018).

Although restrictive abortion laws are not associated with lower rates of abortion according to a 2012 World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute study, due to the socio-political context of Peru the legalization of abortion is not likely to happen. To reduce the number of abortions this delegation proposes the guarantee of sexual education and support in every school in Peru through the creation of programs. It’s noticed that the Peruvian Ministry of Health already gives 13 types of contraceptives for free in 8,000 of its establishments, the delegations propose to expand this action (Andina, 2020). To accomplish the proposals there needs to be an increase in public spending on health in Peru, which has a per capita spending below the Latin American average, and most isn´t spend on collective health which involves the promotion of health (Garcia, 2019). The international proposal of Peru is the creation of Native Health, an international initiative that focuses on cross-cultural health implementation to improve the compliance of reproductive rights in indigenous communities. Peru recognizes this is a delicate moment for reproductive rights in our country but is sure that with help of the UN and other delegations the situation could be better.