Abortion in Uruguay: historical study of the political discussion and the legal system.

The objective of this work is to study the political discussion on the issue of abortion in Uruguay, with the guiding idea that the democratization of the country played a fundamental role to make the discussion about abortion more visible, to expand the debate and to prepare new public policies. Regarding the methodological procedure, the historical perspective - including the description of the demographic scenario – uses as sources of information official documents, of the civil society and of media and literature, in two periods: from the beginning of the military dictatorial period to the beginning of the democratic transition, 1973 to 1985, and from the beginning of the democratic transition to the present democracy, 1985 to 2012. The latter, in turn, is divided in two: from the beginning of democracy to the rise to power of socialist governments, 1985 to 2004, and from the beginning of socialist governments until the present day, 2005 to 2012. The discussion of the subject, on the political agenda since the 1980s, was emphasized in the first decade of this century, culminating in 2012 with the approval by the Parliament of the Law of Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy, which won on October the presidential approval.