Argentina legalizes abortion, a milestone in a conservative region

“I didn’t change my way of thinking about abortion,” said Lucila Crexell, a senator from the southern Neuquén province who had kept her vote under wraps and abstained from a vote on the matter in 2018. “I changed my focus on how I think the issue should be approached. It isn’t about feminism or religion. Clandestine abortion is a silent figure that kills, harms, and writes very sad stories.”

Argentina’s legalization of abortion was a striking rebuke of Pope Francis, who injected himself into the bitter political debate in his homeland on the eve of the vote, praising a women’s group from impoverished neighborhoods for its activism against abortion. It was also a setback for the country’s fast-growing evangelical Protestant churches, which had joined forces with the Catholic Church in opposing the change.

As it unfolded, the Senate debate was closely followed by masses of both opponents and supporters of abortion rights, who camped out in the plaza around the neo-Classical Palace of Congress, chanting, cheering, and praying as they tried to sway a handful of undecided senators to their respective camps.

Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández, has promised to sign the bill into law, making it legal for women to end pregnancies for any reason up to 14 weeks. After that, there will be exceptions allowed for rape and the woman’s health.

The effects of the legalization vote are likely to ripple across Latin America, galvanizing reproductive-rights advocates elsewhere in the region and leaving them hopeful that other socially conservative nations could follow suit.

Uruguay, Cuba, and Guyana are the only other countries in Latin America to allow abortion on request. Argentina, like a number of other countries in the region, had previously permitted abortion in cases of rape or if the pregnancy posed a risk to a woman’s health; other Latin American countries have stricter limits or total prohibitions.

“Legalizing abortion in Argentina is a gigantic victory that protects fundamental rights and will inspire change in Latin America,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, the Americas deputy director for Human Rights Watch. “It’s predictable, however, that this will also mobilize pro-life groups.”

Supporters of the legislation cheered and hugged as soon as the vote total was announced, confirming that what they had been fighting for had become reality.

“It’s one of those things that you anticipate for so long that when it finally happens you can’t believe it and don’t know what to do with yourself,” said María Blanco, 27. “I couldn’t stop crying.”

The vote was a major legislative victory for Fernández, Argentina’s center-left president, who has made women’s rights central to his administration’s agenda.

But primarily it was a win for Argentina’s grass-roots abortion-rights advocates, who have recently paved the way for other deep shifts in the country’s cultural and political landscape — including marriage equality, gender parity initiatives, and transgender rights — and made Argentina a bellwether of changes that have gained broader traction in the region.

Argentina’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, approved the bill earlier this month, by a vote of 131-117. It also passed a similar measure two years ago, only to have it fail in the Senate, 38-31; the president at the time, Mauricio Macri, said he was personally against legalization but vowed not to veto the bill if it made it through Congress.

Fernández campaigned for the presidency on a platform that included abortion rights, gender equality, and gay and transgender rights, and he has followed through on those promises to a degree that has surprised even some of his supporters.

Supporters of the abortion measure, including Senator Norma Durango, said legalizing abortion would simply bring the practice out of the shadows. Researchers say hundreds of thousands of underground abortions are performed in Argentina every year.

Around 40,000 women were hospitalized for complications related to abortions in 2016, according to the latest available data from the Health Ministry, while at least 65 women died between 2016-18 from complications, according to a report by Argentina’s Access to Safe Abortion Network.

“I sit here today representing all the women who have died having clandestine abortions,” said Durango, who was the first lawmaker to speak during the debate that began Tuesday. “Abortion is a reality and it has been taking place since time immemorial.”

Just hours before the Senate took up the measure Tuesday afternoon, Pope Francis, who as pontiff has sought to distance himself from political debates in Argentina, issued a message that appeared directed to the handful of senators who had not yet made their position clear.

“The Son of God was born an outcast, in order to tell us that every outcast is a child of God,” he wrote on Twitter. “He came into the world as each child comes into the world, weak and vulnerable, so that we can learn to accept our weaknesses with tender love.”