Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Blinken warns of ‘high-impact’ economic steps if Russia invades Ukraine

By Humeyra Pamuk

RIGA (Reuters) – The United States is deeply concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine and will respond with a range of “high impact” economic measures if Moscow invades, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Speaking after a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting on Wednesday in the Latvian capital Riga, Blinken said Russia’s plans included efforts to destabilize Ukraine from within as well as large-scale military operations.

Blinken offered the clearest U.S. assessment yet on what Russian President Vladimir Putin might be intending, setting the stage for a tense meeting on Thursday between the top U.S. diplomat and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up planning for potential military action in Ukraine, including positioning tens of thousands of additional combat forces near the Ukrainian border,” Blinken said, in the most forceful U.S. comments yet on Russia’s recent moves.

Russia has previously said its posture towards Ukraine is purely defensive and it has accused Kyiv of plotting to recapture by force areas held by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv denies this charge.

Ukraine urged NATO on Wednesday to prepare further economic sanctions on Moscow to deter any possible Russian invasion.

Blinken said Putin was putting in place the capacity to invade Ukraine and said the United States must prepare for all contingencies, though he said it was not known whether the Russian leader had made the decision to invade.

“We’ve made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high impact economic measures that we have refrained from using in the past,” he said.

Blinken added that there was “tremendous solidarity” within the NATO alliance in willingness to pursue strong measures if Russia invades Ukraine.

“Should Russia reject diplomacy and reinvade Ukraine, we will be prepared to act,” he added.

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Riga and Simon Lewis and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Gareth Jones)

White House says DOJ will defend government’s authority to promote vaccine requirement

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House said on Wednesday the U.S. Department of Justice “will vigorously defend” the government’s authority to promote its vaccine requirement in federal contracting after courts blocked the Biden administration from enforcing two vaccine mandates.

A U.S. District Judge in Louisiana on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from enforcing its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

A U.S. District Judge in Kentucky blocked the administration from enforcing a regulation that new government contracts must include clauses requiring that contractors’ employees get vaccinated.

The legal setbacks, spurred by Republican state attorneys general, conservative groups and trade organizations that have sued to stop the regulations, added to a string of court losses for the Biden administration over its COVID-19 policies.

They also come amid concerns that the Omicron coronavirus variant could trigger a new wave of infections and curtail travel and economic activity around the world.

The administration’s most sweeping regulation – a workplace vaccine-or-testing mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees – was temporarily blocked by a federal appeals court in early November.

“We know vaccine requirements work…We are confident in the government’s authority to promote economy and efficiency in federal contracting through its vaccine requirement and the Department of Justice will vigorously defend it in court,” a White House spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration said a total of 92% of U.S. federal workers have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

President Joe Biden unveiled regulations in September to increase the U.S. adult vaccination rate beyond the current 71% as a way of fighting the pandemic, which has killed more than 750,000 Americans and has weighed on the economy.

Earlier this week, the White House told federal agencies they could delay punishing thousands of federal workers who failed to comply with a Nov. 22 COVID-19 vaccination deadline.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Heinrich)

Justices debate abortion rights in U.S. Supreme Court showdown

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday began hearing arguments in a case on whether to gut abortion rights in America as it weighs Mississippi’s bid to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, is hearing at least 70 minutes of oral arguments in the southern state’s appeal to revive its ban on abortion starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Lower courts blocked the Republican-backed law.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, challenged the law and has the support of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration. A ruling is expected by the end of next June.

Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy. The Supreme Court in a 1992 ruling called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey reaffirmed abortion rights and prohibited laws imposing an “undue burden” on abortion access.

Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer quoted from the Supreme Court’s Casey ruling, which stated that the court should not bow to political pressure in overturning Roe and that such a ruling would “subvert the court’s legitimacy.”

“The right of a woman to choose, the right to control her own body, has been clearly set since Casey and never challenged. You want us to reject that line of viability and adopt something different,” liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

Sotomayor said Mississippi brought its new challenge purely because of changes on the Supreme Court, which has become more conservative.

“Will this institution survive the stench this creates?” Sotomayor asked, saying that it would give the impression that the Constitution and its interpretation is based purely on politics. “If people think it is all political … how will the court survive?”

Anti-abortion advocates believe they are closer than ever to overturning Roe, a longstanding goal for Christian conservatives.

Mississippi’s is one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed in Republican-governed states in recent years. The Supreme Court on Nov. 1 heard arguments over a Texas law banning abortion at around six weeks of pregnancy but has not yet issued a ruling.

Hundreds of protesters from both sides of the abortion debate rallied outside the white marble neoclassical courthouse ahead of the arguments. Anti-abortion protesters held huge signs reading “abortion is murder,” some carrying Christian crosses. Abortion rights activists chanted “what do we want? Abortion access. When do we want it? Now.”

FETAL VIABILITY

The Roe and Casey decisions determined that states cannot ban abortion before a fetus is viable outside the womb, generally viewed by doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks.

Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether viability was a central issue in the Roe or Casey rulings.

Mississippi’s 15-week ban directly challenged the viability finding. Even if the court does not explicitly overturn Roe, any ruling letting states ban abortion before fetal viability outside the womb would raise questions about how early states could prohibit the procedure. In the 1992 Casey ruling, the court said Roe’s “central holding” was that viability was the earliest point at which states could ban abortion.

While urging the court to overturn Roe, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, has said the justices could uphold its law by finding that a 15-week ban does not impose an undue burden. Such a ruling would wipe out the viability standard embraced in the Roe and Casey decisions, meaning the justices would have to consider where to draw the line.

Abortion rights advocates have said such a decision would eviscerate Roe, making it easier for conservative states to impose sweeping abortion restrictions.

Mississippi is among 12 states with so-called trigger laws designed to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Additional states also likely would move quickly to curtail abortion access.

If Roe were overturned or limited, large swathes of America could return to an era in which women who want to end a pregnancy face the choice of undergoing a potentially dangerous illegal abortion, traveling long distances to a state where the procedure remains legal and available or buying abortion pills online. The procedure would remain legal in liberal-leaning states, 15 of which have laws protecting abortion rights.

Abortion remains a contentious issue in the United States, as in many countries. In a June Reuters/Ipsos poll, 52% of U.S. adults said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 36% said it should be illegal in most or all cases.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Gabriella Borter, Jan Wolfe and Julia Harte; Editing by Will Dunham)

Deadly Michigan school shooting baffles police as young suspect keeps silent

By Steve Gorman and Brendan O’Brien

(Reuters) – Investigators were reviewing video and reading the writings of a 15-year-old boy on Wednesday as they sought clues to what drove him to go on a deadly shooting spree at his high school north of Detroit, where he killed three fellow classmates.

The suspect, whose name was withheld by officials because he is a minor, opened fire on Tuesday with a handgun his father had purchased four days earlier, killing three students in Oxford, Michigan, about 40 miles (65 km) from Detroit.

Tate Myre, 16, died in a patrol car en route to a hospital. Hanna St. Julian, 14 and Madisyn Baldwin, 17, were also killed in the shooting. A teacher and seven other students were wounded, some critically, authorities said.

“It’s clear that he came out with the intent to kill people,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in an interview on CNN on Wednesday.

“He was shooting people at close range, oftentimes towards the head and chest. … It’s just absolutely coldhearted murders,” he said, adding that the shooter fired at least 30 shots.

Bouchard said investigators were poring over writings of the shooter they obtained in the middle of the night that contain “some of his thoughts.” They were also watching surveillance videos of the incident.

“We can’t get the motive from the suspect that we have in custody, but we think we’ve got a path to get a lot of supportive information as to how and why this occurred,” he said.

The incident was the latest in a decades-long string of deadly U.S. school shootings that will likely fuel debates about gun control and mental health care, with many states allowing easy access to firearms while mental health disorders often go untreated.

The suspect was armed with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun his father had purchased on Nov. 26, along with three 15-round magazines. Seven live rounds remained in the gun when the youth was arrested, the sheriff said late on Tuesday.

The suspect was disarmed and taken into custody by sheriff’s deputies minutes after the shooting began. He declined to speak with investigators after his parents retained a lawyer and denied authorities permission to interview their son, Bouchard said.

“The person who’s got the most insight on motive is not talking,” the sheriff said.

Bouchard said he was unaware of any previous run-ins with law enforcement by the suspect, a high school sophomore, adding that investigators had so far seen nothing to suggest a history of disciplinary problems or threats.

He said forensic technicians were collecting evidence from the crime scene, while detectives began collecting video footage from security cameras mounted around the school and interviewing witnesses and those acquainted with the suspect.

The sheriff said a search warrant was executed at the suspect’s home in Oxford and his cellphone was seized.

THREE DEAD, EIGHT WOUNDED

Bouchard credited swift action by his deputies for preventing greater loss of life, saying they arrived on the scene within minutes and moved straight toward the sound of gunshots.

Officers confronted the young assailant advancing down a hallway toward them with a loaded weapon, and he put his hands over his head and surrendered, Bouchard said.

The precise sequence of events during the violence remained unclear, but police believe the student carried the weapon into school in a backpack, the sheriff said.

“The only information I have is that he came out of a bathroom with a weapon, and I don’t know where he went first,” Bouchard said.

Prosecutors will decide what charges to bring and whether the suspect should be treated as an adult or juvenile, the sheriff said.

The boy, who was unharmed, was being detained in a special cell under suicide watch at a juvenile detention center, Oakland County Executive David Coulter said.

Of the seven other students struck by gunfire, three of them – a 15-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the head and two girls with chest wounds, aged 14 and 17 – were hospitalized in critical condition, Bouchard said. The younger girl was on a ventilator after surgery.

The four remaining teenage victims – three boys and a girl – were listed in serious or stable condition, he said

One teacher was treated for a shoulder wound and later discharged.

The boy apparently “had been shooting” the gun before Tuesday’s attack and had posted pictures of the weapon and a target he was using, according to the sheriff.

(By Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Jonathan Oatis)

Three students shot dead, six people wounded at Michigan high school; suspect arrested

(Reuters) – A 15-year-old boy killed three fellow high school students and wounded six other people upon opening fire with a semi-automatic handgun at a Michigan high school, and he was quickly taken into custody, police said.

At least one of those wounded was a teacher at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan, about 40 miles (65 km) north of Detroit, the Oakland County Sheriff’s office said.

“The suspect fired multiple shots,” Undersheriff Michael McCabe told reporters at the scene. “There’s multiple victims. It’s unfortunate I have to report that we have three deceased victims right now, who are believed to be students.”

The suspect, a sophomore at the school, was believed to have acted alone and was arrested without resistance after firing 15 to 20 shots, McCabe said.

“The whole thing lasted five minutes,” McCabe said.

WDIV television reported the suspect divulged nothing to police and demanded his right to speak with a lawyer.

Student Abbey Hodder told the Detroit Free Press that she was in chemistry class when she heard the sound of glass breaking.

“My teacher kind of ran out and was scrambling,” Hodder, 15, told the newspaper. “The next thing I knew I saw he was pushing tables. It’s part of school protocol to barricade, so we all knew, barricade, barricade down. And we all started pushing tables.”

McCabe praised the school for its preparation for a shooting and an orderly evacuation.

President Joe Biden was told of the shooting by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in advance of a tour and remarks at a Minnesota technical college, Press Secretary Jan Psaki told reporters.

“My heart goes out to the families enduring the unimaginable grief of losing a loved one,” Biden said from Minnesota.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer called the shooting “horrific.”

“As Michiganders, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to protect each other from gun violence,” Whitmer, a Democrat, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru, Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia and Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif.; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Matthew Lewis)

Canada’s flood-hit British Columbia braces for more heavy rain

OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Canadian province of British Columbia is facing more heavy rains as it tries to recover from massive floods and mudslides, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth told reporters on Tuesday.

Farnworth said crews were working to shore up dikes and dams, adding some roads would be closed protectively.

Flooding earlier this month in Canada’s westernmost province triggered landslides that killed four people, cut off rail access to Vancouver, Canada’s largest port, and caused billions of dollars of damage.

“In some areas … this could be the most intense storm yet,” Farnworth said. “The cumulative effect of this succession of storms will be – and continues to be – a major challenge.”

Officials said parts of the province could expect up to 4.7 inches (12 cm) of rain in less than 36 hours starting later on Wednesday.

The province on Monday extended a state of emergency through Dec. 14. That limits vehicles deemed “non-essential” by the government to 7.9 gallons (30 litres) of fuel.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)

UN official criticizes migrant deportations from southern U.S. border

By Sofia Menchu

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – A top United Nations official has criticized the United States’ deportation of migrants from its southern border, pushing Washington for faster action to roll back hardline immigration policies left over from the previous administration.

Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), urged President Joe Biden’s administration to do more, work faster and more strategically with Mexico and Central America to offer alternatives to illegal migration by improving security and job opportunities.

“We hear a lot of these programs being talked about, but we see very little at this moment still happening on the ground. And I think that this is the real issue …to prevent these movements from happening again or rather from continuing to happen,” Grandi, previously Commissioner-General of the UN Agency for Palestine refugees, told Reuters late Monday in Guatemala. His trip also included Mexico and El Salvador.

Biden vowed to lift many of the strict immigration policies of his predecessor Donald Trump. Still, several of Trump’s most criticized measures remain in place, including the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, informally called “Remain in Mexico”, and Title 42, which enables quick deportations of migrations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The U.S. is now deporting them back very quickly, but we disagree with that,” Grandi said.

“I am worried that the political context is very strong and for this administration, it may be difficult to do the right thing, which they want to do,” he said, adding that the United States should ensure “due process” before deportations.

The United States has deported more than 1.2 million migrants since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Immigration Council. Detentions at the U.S.-Mexico border have hit record highs.

Mexico, too, should offer alternatives to migrants, including those from Haiti, who arrive at the U.S. border after passing through Mexico and have no option but to request asylum, Grandi said.

“We say to Mexico, why not create a separate migration channel for them and provide them with migration opportunities?” Grandi said.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu, writing by Cassandra Garrison; Editing by David Gregorio)

Inflation worries, pandemic curb U.S. consumer confidence; house prices cooling

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer confidence dropped to a nine-month low in November amid worries about the rising cost of living and pandemic fatigue, but that probably does not change expectations for stronger economic growth this quarter.

The survey from the Conference Board on Tuesday showed consumers less enthusiastic about buying a home and big-ticket items such as motor vehicles and major household appliances over the next six months. But consumers held strong views of the labor market, with the gap between those saying jobs are plentiful versus hard to get widening to a record high.

“This isn’t a cause for concern as the relationship between spending and sentiment is loose, particularly in the short-run,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “The good news is that consumers’ assessment of the labor market improved in November, pointing toward further acceleration in job growth.”

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index fell to a reading of 109.5 this month, the lowest reading since February, from 111.6 in October. The survey was conducted before the discovery of Omicron, a new COVID-19 variant, that was announced last week by South African scientists.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index falling to 111.0. The measure, which places more emphasis on the labor market, has dropped from a peak of 128.9 in June. The fall was less than that of the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment, which dropped to a decade low this month.

Data this month have suggested that the economy was accelerating in the fourth quarter, with consumer spending surging in October. But the outlook for next year has been clouded by the Omicron variant, which has since been detected in several countries outside the southern African region.

Not much is known about how contagious or vaccine resistant the Omicron variant is. The Conference Board’s so-called labor market differential, derived from data on respondents’ views on whether jobs are plentiful or hard to get, jumped to a reading of 46.9 this month, the highest on record, from 43.8 in October.

This measure closely correlates to the unemployment rate in the Labor Department’s closely watched employment report.

Combined with declining new claims for unemployment benefits, it raises hopes that job growth accelerated further this month, though a shortage of workers remains a challenge. There were 10.4 million job openings at the end of September.

INFLATION FEARS MOUNT

Consumers’ inflation expectations over the next 12 months surged to 7.6% in November from 7.1% last month. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers on Tuesday that the higher prices were generally related to the pandemic, and warned that the risk of higher inflation had increased.

Stocks on Wall Street were trading lower on Powell’s inflation comments. The dollar rose against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were mixed.

Rising inflation is starting to influence consumers’ spending decisions, the Conference Board survey suggested.

Buying intentions for motor vehicles fell as did plans to purchase household appliances, television sets and refrigerators over the next six months. But intentions to buy washing machines and clothes dryers rose.

The survey also showed consumers less inclined to buy a house over the next six months. Slowing demand could help to further cool house price inflation.

A second report on Tuesday showed the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller’s 20 metropolitan area home price index rose 19.1% on a year-on-year basis in September after advancing 19.6 %in August.

Signs that house price growth was moderating were evident in a third report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that showed house prices rose 17.7% in the 12 months through September after powering ahead 18.5% in August.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)

The race is on to trace the new COVID-19 variant

By Alistair Smout, Francesco Guarascio and Chen Lin

LONDON/BRUSSELS/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Governments around the world are urgently scouring databases for recent cases of COVID-19 infections, screening travelers and decoding the viral genomes of the new variant as they try to measure how far it has spread.

The pace of the work highlights the pressure on governments and public health authorities to decide quickly whether they need to take unpopular, economically damaging steps to curb Omicron’s spread.

Data shows it was circulating before it was officially identified in southern Africa last week and it has since been detected in more than a dozen countries. Work to establish if it is more infectious, deadly or evades vaccines will take weeks.

Britain and other major economies banned flights to and from southern Africa just days after the variant was first detected, roiling global financial markets and stirring worries about the economic damage.

The speed of the action is in stark contrast to the emergence of other variants – when the first samples of the Alpha variant were documented in Britain in September 2020, the government spent months gathering data and assessing its potential danger before imposing a nationwide lockdown in December.

It took the World Health Organization (WHO) months to designate it a variant of concern – its highest level.

Soon after detecting its first Omicron case on Friday, Israel announced it would buy 10 million more PCR kits that can detect the variant in an effort to contain its spread. It shut its borders to foreigners from all countries on Saturday.

Scotland and Singapore are scrambling to check tens of thousands of recent positive cases for signs of the variant they may have missed and the United States is enhancing its COVID-19 surveillance to distinguish domestic cases of the Omicron variant from the still-dominant Delta.

The European Union’s health commissioner has urged member states to boost efforts to detect mutations, as some still lag behind almost two years into the pandemic.

The bloc has now confirmed 42 cases in 10 countries.

“Certain Member States lag behind considerably in terms of this crucial dimension,” Stella Kyriakides said in a letter seen by Reuters to health ministers of the 27 EU countries.

“Already faced with a challenging winter due to the high transmissibility of the Delta variant (…) we may now experience further or additional pressures because of the appearance of the Omicron variant,” she wrote.

ALL ABOUT THE S-GENE

Most PCR tests cannot distinguish Omicron from the Delta variant, the dominant and most infectious version of the virus so far.

To distinguish Omicron from Delta, the PCR test must be able to identify a mutation in Omicron known as the S-gene drop-out or S-gene target failure (SGTF).

It is not a fail-safe because the Alpha variant, first identified in Britain, also has that mutation.

Given that Alpha is no longer widely circulating, the presence of the S-gene dropout suggests the sample is positive for Omicron and alerts the lab to send the sample for genome sequencing for confirmation.

If local PCR tests cannot identify this mutation, then randomly selected PCR swab samples must undergo genome sequencing, which can take up to a week.

The WHO has said that widely available tests are able to detect individuals infected with any variant, including Omicron.

However, it has so far only recommended the TaqPath test produced by U.S. firm Thermo Fisher as a proxy.

It’s not clear if countries will buy kits due to the unique characteristic of the test. Singapore is considering buying more, although no decision has yet been made, Kenneth Mak, the health ministry’s director of medical services, told Reuters.

Thermo Fisher has said it is prepared to increase production to meet demand from countries in Africa and elsewhere as they work to track the spread of the new variant.

Within a day of the variant being identified, Israel started checking for the S-Gene in all positive tests taken from travelers arriving at the main Ben Gurion airport, Israel’s head of public health at the Health Ministry, Sharon Alroy-Preis, told Parliament on Sunday.

Now, its labs monitor for that mutation in all tests nationwide and when a positive PCR test indicates SGTF, the sample is taken for further sequencing, the health ministry said.

Most U.S. labs will be using the TaqPath test, Scott Becker, chief executive of the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), a network of state and municipal public health laboratories, told Reuters.

QUIRKS OF THE VARIANT

Out of the 150,000 positive tests going back a month assessed in Belgium, 47 had S-gene drop-out and a high viral load. Only one of them was Omicron, according to Marc Van Rast, one of the virologists who parsed the samples.

The Scottish authorities have gone through swabs back to Nov. 1 to help in discover nine cases of Omicron, all linked to the same event.

They have found that around Nov. 16, S-gene target failure had started appearing in the tests again, a week before South Africa and Botswana identified the new variant. That feature has helped to direct genomic sequencing, as it did when Alpha emerged.

“That is one of the quirks of this particular variant that we can use to our advantage,” Gregor Smith, Scotland’s chief medical officer, said on Monday.

It means the government can start estimating how prevalent the new variant may be, identify people who may need to get tested again and which samples need to be prioritized for further decoding in labs, Smith said.

“It’s the best method that we have to be able to identify cases at this point in time.”

(Reporting by Alistair Smout in London, Francesco Guarascio in Brussels, Chen Lin in Singapore, Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago and Maayan Lubell and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Writing by Josephine Mason; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Chile lawmakers knock down bill to ease abortion rules

By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile’s lower Chamber of Deputies rejected a bill on Tuesday that sought to expand legal access for women to get abortions, legislation that was opposed by the South American country’s center-right government.

At the end of September, legislators in the chamber voted in favor of studying and debating the bill, that proposed legalizing termination of pregnancy up to 14 weeks.

Chile in 2017 legalized abortion for women under conditions where their life was in danger, a fetus was unviable or when a pregnancy had resulted from rape.

“The Chamber rejected a motion that modifies the Penal Code, to decriminalize consensual abortion by women within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. The project is shelved,” the lower chamber posted on Twitter after the vote.

Deputy Maya Fernández, who had promoted the bill, criticized the rejection and said it would push women into more risky illegal abortions.

“Many still prefer that there be clandestine abortions where women are subjected to inhumane conditions,” she wrote on Twitter.

A number of countries around conservative Latin America have taken steps to decriminalize abortion, including Argentina last year and Mexico, where the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in September that penalizing abortion is unconstitutional.

(Reporting by Fabián Andrés Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and David Gregorio)