StoryOn December 30, 2020, the voluntary termination of pregnancy was legalized by the Argentine Senate. A hard-won achievement. Thirty years ago already, pioneers went on campaign, in indifference, to defend the right to decide to have a child or not.
“Our body no longer belongs to the state! It was not until the XXIe century, but it happened! ” A howl of joy echoes through the streets of Buenos Aires. The tears flow. It is 4 am, this Wednesday, December 30, 2020, and the Congress Square of the Argentine capital has just been swept by a green tide, the rallying color of pro-abortion.. After twelve hours of waking under oppressive heat, the cry of hundreds of thousands of women resounded: “Es ley! “ (“It’s legal!”).
The Argentine Senate has just approved, with 38 votes to 29 and one abstention, the legalization of abortion. Among these young women with eyelids spangled with green, some, older, are there, some leaning on a cane, still incredulous. Martha Rosenberg, Olga Cristiano, Alicia Cacopardo, Alicia Schejter, Nina Brugo, Elsa Schvartzman… At 70 and over, these pioneers have been waiting for this moment for more than thirty years.
Argentina becomes the first major country in the American subcontinent to allow women to freely dispose of their bodies, confirming its place at the forefront of social rights in the region – after approving marriage for all, in 2010 , and the law on gender identity, in 2012. Only Cuba, Guyana, Uruguay, Mexico City and the Mexican state of Oaxaca have legalized voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion).
Nearly 500,000 clandestine abortions each year
The bill adopted at the end of December had been presented by the executive a month earlier. For the first time in the history of Argentina, a president, Alberto Fernandez (center-left, elected in October 2019), says he is in favor of the legalization of abortion. A revolution in a country where abortion has always been a taboo considered piantavotos (which causes the loss of votes) by the political class, but whose clandestine practice is nevertheless massive – between 300 000 and 500 000 women abort each year in this country of 44 million people, according to estimates.
Until now, the penal code of 1921 allowed the termination of pregnancy in case of rape or danger to the health of the pregnant woman. But it was not applied and most of the women were forced to have an abortion underground with artisanal means, therefore in poor conditions, or for large sums of money in private clinics. “The rich abort, the poor die”, say the pro-abortion. We estimate at 3 000 the number of deaths since the return of democracy in 1983.
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