Argentina’s Progression Towards Women’s Rights

By: Lauren Marshall

Argentina, as a primarily Catholic country, has one of the most restrictive abortion laws for women in the world.[1] With limited access to safe abortions and barely any reproductive freedom, women have been pushing for reform.[2] In 2018, activists came close to pushing legislation through.[3] However, with a new president, Alberto Fernández, activists now have the political support to present a legalization bill to Congress.[4]

Activists have officially started the second round of their efforts to advance reproductive rights.[5] Previously, abortion rights activists had a powerful grass-roots movement where the lower house of Congress voted in favor of legalizing abortion with the Senate narrowly voting down the bill.[6] However, this year, the President of Argentina is a powerful new ally and is expected to put forward a bill that would effectively legalize abortion.[7] The President has yet to announce any details of the bill.[8] However, in March 2020, he “will present a bill for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy that legalises [sic] abortion at the initial time of pregnancy and allows women to access the health system when they make the decision to abort.”[9]

President Fernández is the first president to support the legalization of abortion.[10] There is still some uncertainty with the likelihood of the abortion rights bill being passed.[11] In the lower house, there are 33 votes unaccounted for, and in the Senate, votes against the legalization of abortion outweigh the votes in favor by a slim margin.[12] This means that President Fernández would potentially have the final say.[13]

Perhaps more important in Argentina’s legal climate is the “social decriminalization” of the issue of abortion, allowing it to rise to the surface as an important move towards bodily autonomy for women.[14] While social decriminalization has remained an important factor in the movement for the legalization of abortion, the elimination of fear of legal repercussions is even more important. Doctors have delivered babies from young women with low viability rates because of the fear of being indicted on murder charges from aborting.[15] Similarly, women have been sentenced to years in prison after courts have found out about them having an abortion.[16] In the case of Belen, she spent more than two years in prison after a court ruled that what doctors had diagnosed as a miscarriage was an abortion.[17] In another case of Ana Maria Acevedo, she sought an abortion in 2007 in order to undergo chemotherapy.[18] Acevedo was refused, and she subsequently died.[19] Finally, in a case of an 11-year-old girl known as Lucia, who was raped by her grandmother’s partner and denied a legal abortion by health authorities in 2019, until a court finally intervened.[20] Thus, “activists were relieved when Mr. Fernández reiterated his intention to push for decriminalizing abortion shortly after he met with the pontiff in the Vatican last month.”[21]

Under the new protocol announced in December 2019, women and girls will have access to abortion in cases of rape.[22] While women already were allowed access to abortion in cases of rape or threat to life or health of the mother, the law was not always applied across the predominantly Roman Catholic county.[23] Typically, hospitals would have too much say in determining which cases fell under the legal criteria.[24] While still trying to remain respectful of conscientious objection, Argentina’s Health Minister stated that “conscientious objection cannot be used as an institutional alibi for not complying with the law.”[25] The country has at least 350,000 illegal abortions every year; some international human rights groups indicate that this number could even be higher,[26] perhaps as high as 500,000.[27]

Fernandez calls the current law “ineffective” and states that “[i]t has also condemned many women, generally of limited resources, to resort to abortive practices in absolute secrecy, putting their health and sometimes their lives at risk.”[28]

The next step for Argentina will be a project for Congress as an effort to continue advancing women’s rights.[29] President Fernández plans to send a project to Congress that will provide better support to newborns and mothers and to come up with a plan to implement procedures where sexual education is taught in schools.[30]

The women’s rights movement in Argentina has grown exponentially and has increasingly grown stronger in just recent years.[31] Legislators, such as Daniel Lipovetsky, have explained that the announcement of President Fernández proposed law shows just how far Argentina has come on the issue.[32] Lipovetsky stated himself, “[j]ust a few years ago, it would have been unimaginable that a president would send a project to legalise [sic] abortion to the Congress.”[33]

While the influence of the Catholic Church remains strong in Argentina, legislators in favor of the bill believe that the votes are there for approval in the lower house but will be close in the Senate.[34] Still, women and supporters of the bill remain optimistic.[35]

#niunamenos #LaurenMarshall #Argentina #InternationalLaw #Blogpost

[1] Hugh Bronstein, Argentina’s New Government Moves to Guarantee Access to Abortion in Rape Cases, Reuters (Dec. 12, 2019, 5:45 PM), https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-abortion/argentinas-new-government-moves-to-guarantee-access-to-abortion-in-rape-cases-idUSKBN1YG2RH.

[2] See Daniel Politi, New Bid to Legalize Abortion in Argentina, With President’s Backing, NY Times (Feb. 22, 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/22/world/americas/abortion-argentina.html.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] Id.

[7] Id.

[8] Id.

[9] Natalie Alcoba, Argentina President to Introduce Bill to Legalise Abortion, Al Jazeera (Mar. 2, 2020), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/argentina-president-introduce-bill-legalise-abortion-200302030410385.html.

[10] Politi, supra note 2.

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Id.

[14] See id.

[15] Daniel Politi, An 11-Year-Old in Argentina was Raped. A Hospital Denied Her an Abortion, NY Times (Mar. 1, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/world/americas/11-year-old-argentina-rape-abortion.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article.

[16] See Politi, supra note 2.

[17] Alcoba, supra note 9.

[18] Id.

[19] Id.

[20] Id.

[21] Politi, supra note 2.

[22] Bronstein, supra note 1.

[23] Id.

[24] Id.

[25] Id.  

[26] Id.

[27] Alcoba, supra note 9.

[28] Id.

[29] Id.

[30] Id.

[31] Id.

[32] Id.

[33] Id.

[34] Id.

[35] Id.