The national Supreme Court ruled that non-punishable abortions do not require the authorisation of a judge (photo: Gustavo Amarelle/ archivoTélam/lz)
A judge from Esquel, in the southern province of Chubut, was fined $1,500 for attempting to prevent the legal abortion of a 12-year-old rape victim.
The Supreme Court of Chubut found that the ruling by Judge José Colabelli‘s meant a “grave fault in the exercise of his functions”. The decision was made in May, however it only became public yesterday through the local press, as it was appealed before the national Supreme Court.
The case dates back to 2012, when the mother of the 12-year-old girl reported the case to the police upon finding out her daughter was 16 weeks pregnant. General prosecutor María Bottini took the case, considering it to fall under the definition of a non-punishable abortion, and requested the judge authorisation to obtain genetic material from the child’s body in order to perform DNA tests to find the rapist. The judge not only refused the DNA extraction, but also considered that the request “implicitly means the expectation that an authorisation for the interruption of the pregnancy, that is, an abortion, will be granted”.
The case was later transferred to two other judges. They refused to rule on the issue of the non-punishable abortion —because the intervention does not need to be authorised by a judge— and allowed the extraction of genetic material. The abortion was eventually carried out.
In their ruling, the Supreme Court judges clarified they did not question Colabelli’s opinion on the non-punishable abortion or his “moral objections”, but the way he carried out the decision. They stated the judge acted with “evident arbitrariness” and “abusive exercise of the power with which he has been invested” and that it was not his place to emit an opinion about the abortion because the case did not require a judicial authorisation. “It was beyond his scope,” said the judges.
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