ABORTION in Chile.

‘Abortion to protect the health of the mother was legal from 1931 until 1989. Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s dictator until 1990, ended that exception.’ In the 1990s children born out of wedlock gained equal rights and sodomy was decriminalised; divorce and same-sex civil unions became legal in this century. [Michelle] Bachelet…sought to advance women’s rights in both her [presidential] administrations. Under a law passed in 2010 women aged 14 and older won the right to receive the contraception of their choice, including the morning-after pill. Ms Bachelet also introduced a basic pension for old people who had not built up a right to a benefit through work. It goes mostly to women. In her second term, congress passed a law compelling political parties to select women as at least 40% of their candidates in parliamentary elections (just 16% of today’s legislators are women). Ms Bachelet set state-owned enterprises a goal of appointing women to fill 40% of the seats on their boards, which they have met. (Only 6% of directors of publicly traded companies are women,’ (‘Term endings’, The Economist August 12 2017, p36).