A few days before the vote of deputies on the legalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), the enthusiasm of feminist activists is at its height. Covid-19 obliges, the fervor in the streets is however not the same as in 2018, when hundreds of thousands of Argentines marched, for months, in Buenos Aires, to support a bill in favor of legalization – a text approved by the deputies in June 2018, then rejected two months later in the Senate.
In recent weeks, the mobilizations have been more timid and focus more on social networks or through poster campaigns on the public highway. The latest, visible on the walls and signs in the capital, takes up a motif that has already been used for several years by the Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion (the collective of associations that have been fighting since fifteen years for legalization): a white hanger, symbol of clandestine abortion, on a green background, with the caption ” Farewell “.
The government’s bill must be examined and voted on by the deputies on Thursday, December 10. A particularly symbolic date, since it corresponds not only to International Human Rights Day, but also to the anniversary of the coming to power of the center-left Peronist president Alberto Fernandez, who had made the legalization of abortion one of his campaign promises.
“The 2018 mobilization placed the subject of abortion in the public debate. But having a text carried by the executive gives a whole new weight to this debate ”, says Patricia Gomez, professor of political science at the University of Buenos Aires, specialist in feminism and gender issues. “The government has made this historic request from the feminist movement a priority”, underlines Monica Macha, member of the Frente de Todos, the ruling coalition, who says she is confident about the vote this week.
“No party discipline”
According to the calculations of the feminist organization Economia Feminista, the bill should be approved without a hitch in the Chamber of Deputies: 127 deputies declared themselves for, against 110 opposed to legalization – there are also twenty undecided. “It is one of the rare subjects on which there is no party discipline”, says political scientist Patricia Gomez, “As was the case with the divorce law [promulguée en 1987] “. In 2018, women parliamentarians from different political groups, known as the “Sororas”, had united around their support for the right to abortion, a rare occurrence in a country usually divided by grieta, the political divide between Peronism and anti-Peronism.
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