Mobilization in front of the Argentine Congress in favor of legal abortion, in November Illustrated Service (Automatic) / Europa Press
It is the ninth time that a bill for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy has been presented in the Argentine Congress, but perhaps it is the last.
Unlike the previous ones, the initiative is promoted by the Government and has the support of the President, Alberto Fernández.
The supporters of legal abortion negotiated last-minute changes to add accessions, aware of the close vote that is coming: starting this Thursday in the Chamber of Deputies and then in the Senate.
In 2018, the project was approved by the first Chamber, but rejected in the second.
The proposal that the deputies will begin to debate this Thursday around noon - and which is expected to last until the early hours of Friday - regulates that women and "other identities with the ability to gestate" can interrupt their pregnancy until week 14. From that the abortion is requested until it is carried out cannot take more than ten days, which aims to avoid ordeals like that of Lucia, an eleven-year-old girl raped by her grandmother who was hospitalized for almost a month until a court order forced to the hospital to comply with her will to abort.
The legalization of abortion is accompanied by another project, the Thousand Days Plan, which aims to accompany, protect and support motherhood and the first three years of the newborn's life.
This initiative, together with the changes made to the Executive's abortion project - such as the relaxation of conscientious objection -, aim to attract undecided legislators to vote in favor of the law.
“The legalization of abortion saves women's lives, it does not increase the number of abortions or promote them.
It only solves a problem that affects public health ”, said the Argentine president when announcing the sending of the project to Congress in mid-November.
Since Argentina's return to democracy in 1983, more than 3,000 women have died of abortions.
Each year, about 40,000 women are hospitalized for complications arising from pregnancy terminations.
“The debate is not saying yes or no to abortion.
Abortions occur clandestinely and put the health and lives of the women who undergo them at risk.
Therefore, the dilemma that we must overcome is whether abortions are performed clandestinely or in the Argentine health system, ”Fernández stressed.
Most of the fatalities were women who aborted in unsafe conditions, sometimes with dangerous methods such as perches, parsley or catheters.
In those cases, the search for medical help was often delayed for fear of the consequences: Argentine law punishes abortion with penalties of up to four years in prison, except if the pregnancy was the result of rape or the mother's health is at risk. .
Criminal threat
“The criminal threat impacts on all the people who interrupt a pregnancy.
But it only imprisons and punishes those who lack the symbolic or material tools to access a safe abortion, inside or outside the health system ”, says the Center for Social and Legal Studies in an investigation carried out together with the University of San Martín on the legal persecution of those who abort in Argentina.
According to CELS, at least 73 women have been criminalized for abortions or other obstetric events since 2012.
The best known case was that of a woman known as Belén, who was imprisoned for 29 months for a spontaneous abortion in Tucumán, in the north of the country, in 2014. Another is Gimena, 26 years old and a mother of two children, who since 2016 she is detained in a prison unit in Salta.
One of the tests that the Justice used to convict her was to have searched the internet for how to perform home abortions.
Patricia, a mother of two daughters, died in 2019, at the age of 40, in the prison where she had been held since 2015, convicted of having had an abortion at five months of gestation and having disposed of the fetus in a field.
In 2018, President Mauricio Macri enabled the legislative debate on the legal interruption of abortion for the first time and announced that, if the bill was approved, he would not veto it.
He did not have to keep his promise: the 38 votes against in the Senate - as opposed to 31 positive ones - buried the initiative that the lower house had approved.
The months of debate in Congress and the mobilizations in the street in favor and against legal abortion polarized Argentine society, but they also made the termination of pregnancy cease to be a taboo.
Hundreds of women have since made their abortions public, including the ruling deputy Cecilia Moreau.
Nobody takes abortion as a contraceptive method.
Nobody promotes abortion.
Nobody wants to get an abortion.
But it happens.
And in the event that happens to them, what happened to me and what happened to many, they have to be certain that they do not have to be afraid. # AbortoLegal2020 pic.twitter.com/J6MRWzePJ5
- Cecilia Moreau (@CECILIAMOREAU) December 4, 2020
“Nobody takes abortion as a contraceptive method.
Nobody promotes abortion.
Nobody wants to get an abortion.
But you know what?
Come in, ”Moreau said in front of his colleagues last week.
“This woman who is chairing this commission today at age 16 happened to him.
My birth control failed.
I was a girl and wanted to have a life.
He dreamed of being a doctor, of a military man, of traveling.
I was lucky enough to be able to speak with my mother and with my conscious and responsible decision, my mother accompanied me, but I was also fortunate that she had the economic methods to get to a clinic in Recoleta ”, she continued, when recounting her abortion under the conditions safer at that time, when the interventions required medical intervention and were not done with pills, the majority option today.
A debate in the street
Supporters and detractors of legal abortion - identified by the green color in the first case and the blue color in the second - will mobilize this Thursday in front of Congress despite the covid-19 pandemic that has already caused more than 40,000 deaths in the country.
Catholics and evangelicals lead the offensive against the approval of the law, considering that life begins at conception.
The deputies opposed to the law support the Plan of the thousand days, which will be voted on after the project of voluntary interruption of pregnancy, but emphasize that it cannot serve as compensation.
“The response to an unwanted pregnancy has to be a State that accompanies that woman.
Let the boy be born and give him up for adoption last if he doesn't want to have it.
This government believes that giving a little money solves everything, "criticizes Celeste deputy Cynthia Hotton.
A crowd will hold a vigil in the streets awaiting the results.
If approved, it will go to the Senate, the most conservative chamber.
In 2018, senators closed the doors for Argentina to become the first large country in Latin America to legalize abortion, following in the footsteps of little ones like Uruguay, Cuba, Guyana and cities like the Mexican capital.