The right to abortion in Argentina is in danger. A group of deputies from Javier Milei’s far-right party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), presented, on Wednesday night, a firm bill that aims to repeal the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy law, approved in the Argentine Congress at the end of 2020. The text presented classifies the voluntary interruption of pregnancy as a crime and maintains that “a woman who causes her own abortion or consents to someone else causing it will be punished with imprisonment of one to three years.”
The text not only represents a break with the current law, which allows women to have a legal and free abortion up to the 14th week of gestation; It is even more restrictive than the Penal Code that was in effect between 1921 and 2020, because it makes legal abortion impossible even in cases of rape, leaving it in the hands of the judge. The argument that seeks to validate the cause of non-punishment in pregnancies due to rape is based on the fact that “it has been systematically interpreted as a justification of the practice.”
The only assumption that the text contemplates as a justification for abortion in a non-reprehensible manner would be as long as it was done “in order to avoid an inexorable danger to the life of the mother, as long as the danger cannot be avoided by other means.” .
Furthermore, the article refers to the specialists in charge of abortions, pointing out that doctors, surgeons, midwives or pharmacists who abuse their science or art to cause abortion will be subject to a “special disqualification for double the duration of the sentence.” abortion or cooperate in causing it.”
According to the Argentine network LN, Milei did not give the order to present the project, so it appears to be an initiative of the six legislators who signed the bill. Óscar Zago, head of the LLA block in the Chamber of Deputies or Leila Lemoine, were some of the headings that appear in the text, written by the legislator of the province of Santa Fe, Rocío Belén Bonacci.
But the parliamentary initiative presented by various LLA parliamentarians is no surprise. Milei and her vice president, Victoria Villarruel, strongly expressed their opposition to legal abortion during the election campaign, making clear their interest in repealing current legislation.
The issue of abortion generates controversy in Argentine society. With countless demonstrations in front of the Congress of Buenos Aires, tens of thousands of women pressured Congress with the outcome of the approval of the law at the end of 2020, with clear support from the then president, Alberto Fernández.
During these three years, around 250,000 cases of voluntary terminations of pregnancy were recorded in public sector institutions. Simultaneously, the maternal mortality rate experienced a significant decrease, reducing by almost half – from 23 annual deaths in 2020 to 13 the following year.
The text has been made public during Milei’s tour of Israel, Italy and the Vatican, in which he plans to meet with Pope Francis on February 12. This visit seeks a greater rapprochement with the Holy See, after the insults in which he was disqualified as “disastrous”, “imbecile” and accused of “seeking to spread communism.” But once he arrived at the Casa Rosada, he changed his tone and claimed to have apologized.
The news also seeks to be a smokescreen in the face of the harsh parliamentary defeat, suffered by Milei, this week, of its megaproject known as the Omnibus Law, by the opposition. The president’s star project consisted of 664 articles, in which various key points were rejected by the opposition.
The news of the proposed law has had an immediate reaction from the feminist movements, under the slogan “Not one step back!” This very night, public assemblies have begun to be called to organize against this government initiative, with the intention of being, along with Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay, the countries that have a law favorable to abortion, each with its particularities.
