Standing in the packed courtroom annex as a Supreme Court panel this week sentenced the former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori to 25 years in prison for two massacres and two kidnappings, I had mixed emotions.

It's been a long time since the days of back-alley abortions in the U.S. Perhaps that's why South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds signed into law a ban against abortion in his state, with one narrow exception: protecting the life of the pregnant woman. Perhaps Rounds, who was only 19 when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, doesn't remember what it was like to live in a country where women had no right to a safe, legal abortion. But there is a place he could visit if he wants to refresh his memory: Latin America.

The bodies of Peruvian women are used as battle fields in the war against the basic right to reproductive health. Since 2001, the Peruvian administration and the congress have gone back and forth on the legalization of the so-called “morning-after pill.” Since 2002, the Peruvian congress has discussed different versions of a bill that would define the human person as existing from the moment of fertilization.