GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (LifeSiteNews) — Guatemala has reversed course and shelved a recently-passed bill that would have banned same-sex “marriage” and increased punishments for committing or obtaining abortions.
Guatemala’s Congress had overwhelmingly approved the “Protection of Life and Family” bill last week, with 101 out of 160 votes in favor and just eight against. But lawmakers voted to abandon the legislation on Tuesday, after a veto threat from the country’s conservative president and pressure from the Biden administration. One hundred and nineteen deputies voted to archive the bill indefinitely, InfoCatólica reported.
Under the bill, women who decide to kill their unborn babies could have faced between 5 and 10 years in prison, up from a current maximum of three. For doctors who commit abortions, the penalty would have been as high as 25 years, except in cases when two doctors say that a mother’s life is at risk.
The legislation also explicitly outlaws so-called same-sex “marriage,” which Guatemala does not recognize, and bars promotion of gender ideology in schools. Teachers would have been banned from instructing students that “anything other than heterosexuality is normal” if the measure became law.
President Alejandro Giammattei, who touts himself as pro-life and pro-family, announced last Thursday that he would veto the bill if it reached his desk and called on Congress to shelve it. Giammattei said that the law violated international conventions that Guatemala has joined, as well as the Guatemalan constitution, which guarantees the right to life from conception.
Giammattei had hosted an event with international pro-life and Christian groups the previous day declaring Guatemala the “pro-life capital of Latin America.”
Congress could have overridden the president’s veto with a two-thirds majority of 105 votes.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that the U.S. government “also expressed serious concerns about enacting the legislation” in back-channel conversations with the government of Guatemala, according to multiple anonymous American officials.
The pro-abortion, pro-LGBT Biden administration has previously clashed with Guatemalan leaders, including over allegations of corruption.
The demise of Guatemala’s pro-life and pro-family bill comes after multiple Latin American countries have moved to decriminalize abortion in recent months. A law in Pope Francis’ native Argentina that took effect early last year legalizes elective abortion until 14 weeks of pregnancy.
In Chile, the plenary session of the Chilean Constitutional Convention approved a proposed article this week to enshrine abortion and contraception access into the nation’s constitution.
Bucking the trend, Peru’s Congress endorsed a motion Wednesday recognizing the personhood of unborn children “from the moment of conception,” according to InfoCatólica.