BUENOS AIRES – Argentina on Wednesday became the largest nation in Latin America to legalize abortion, a milestone in voting in a conservative region and a victory for a grassroots movement that transformed years of demonstrations into political power.
The high-risk vote in the Senate grabbed the nation until early morning, and the approval of the measure – by a larger than expected margin from 38 to 29, with one abstention – came after 12 hours of frequently dramatic debate, exposing the tensions between the long-dominated Roman Catholic Church, whose influence is waning, and a growing feminist movement.
As the Senate debate unfolded, it was closely followed by masses of opponents and supporters of the right to abortion, who camped in the square around the neoclassical Palace of Congress, singing, cheering and praying as they tried to influence a handful of indecisive senators. for their respective fields.
Argentine President Alberto Fernández has promised to sanction the bill, making it legal for women to terminate pregnancy for any reason within 14 weeks. After that, there will be exceptions allowed for rape and the mother’s health.
The effects of the legalization vote are likely to spread across Latin America, galvanizing reproductive rights defenders in other parts of the region and leaving them hopeful that other socially conservative nations can follow suit.
Uruguay, Cuba and Guyana are the only other countries in Latin America that allow abortion upon request. Argentina, like several other countries in the region, had already allowed abortion in cases of rape or if pregnancy represented a risk to women’s health; other Latin American countries have stricter limits or total bans.
“Legalizing abortion in Argentina is a huge victory that protects fundamental rights and will inspire change in Latin America,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, deputy director of Human Rights Watch for the Americas. “It is predictable, however, that this will also mobilize pro-life groups.”
The legalization of abortion in Argentina was a strong criticism of Pope Francis, who injected himself in the bitter political debate in his homeland on the eve of the vote, praising a group of women from poor neighborhoods for his activism against abortion. It was also a setback for the rapid growth of the country’s evangelical Protestant churches, which joined forces with the Catholic Church in opposing the change.
“I feel a deep anguish because in this country that I love the right to life is not respected,” said Abigail Pereira, 27, who had been in Buenos Aires protesting against legalization. “But I will continue to fight.”
The vote was an important legislative victory for Fernández, Argentina’s center-left president, who placed women’s rights at the center of his government’s agenda.
But mostly, it was a victory for Argentina’s abortion rights advocates, who recently paved the way for other profound changes in the country’s cultural and political landscape – including marriage equality, gender parity initiatives and transgender rights – and made Argentina a thermometer country of the changes that gained greater strength in the region.
Argentina’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, approved the bill earlier this month, by 131 votes to 117. It also passed a similar measure two years ago, only to see it fail in the Senate, 38 to 31; the president at the time, Mauricio Macri, said he was personally against legalization, but promised not to veto the bill if it passed Congress.
Fernández campaigned for the presidency on a platform that included abortion rights, gender equality, and gay and transgender rights, and he kept those promises to a degree that surprised even some of his supporters.
Supporters of the abortion measure, including Senator Norma Durango, said that legalizing abortion would simply take the practice out of the shadows. The researchers say that hundreds of thousands of clandestine abortions are performed in Argentina every year.
About 40,000 women were hospitalized for abortion-related complications in 2016, according to the latest data available from the Ministry of Health, while at least 65 women died between 2016 and 2018 of complications, according to a report by the Argentine Network for Access to Safe abortion.
“I sit here today representing all the women who died having clandestine abortions,” said Durango, who was the first lawmaker to speak during the debate that started Tuesday. “Abortion is a reality and has been occurring since time immemorial.”
The effort to loosen Argentina’s abortion laws has been decades in the making, but it was driven by the feminist movement Ni Una Menos, which formed in 2015 to protest violence against women and has since been the driving force behind the legalization campaign. abortion.
The symbol of this effort in Argentina – the green handkerchiefs – became popular in several countries in Latin America, including Mexico, where women who use them have taken to the streets demanding greater support for their rights.
“The green movement that started in Argentina has conquered the entire region,” said Paula Ávila-Guillen, executive director of the Women’s Equality Center. “Any activist from Mexico to Argentina is using the green scarf as a symbol to legalize abortion.”
A few hours before the Senate took action on Tuesday afternoon, Pope Francis, who as a pontiff has sought to distance himself from political debates in Argentina, delivered a message that seemed addressed to a handful of senators who had not yet left his clear position.
“The Son of God was born an outcast, to tell us that every outcast is a child of God,” he wrote on Twitter. “He came into the world as every child comes into the world, weak and vulnerable, so that we can learn to accept our weaknesses with tender love.”
Catholic and evangelical leaders asked supporters to observe a day of prayer and fasting on Monday to reflect on “the death of so many innocent children”. Church leaders have worked throughout the year to galvanize the faithful, and major anti-abortion marches have taken place across the country.
On Tuesday, opponents of legal abortion, who often wear baby blue, displayed a large doll that looked like a fetus, which they sprayed fake blood.
Fernández, a law professor who has long supported the legalization of abortion, made it a campaign promise and an early legislative priority as soon as he took office in late 2019. The decision involved political risks as he took over the reins of an economy troubled who has been in recession for two years and soon after ordered one of the strictest coronavirus blocks in the world.
But Fernández and his vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, came to see abortion as one of the few items on their agenda that could move forward amid a torrent of challenges. Ms. Kirchner, who led Argentina as president from 2007 to 2015, opposed the legalization of abortion for most of her political career.
Her position changed before the 2018 vote, when tens of thousands of women protested across Argentina in support of the legality of access to abortion upon request. Mrs. Kirchner, who was a senator at the time, said that her daughter played a key role in her change of opinion.
“Throughout our years of activism, we have managed to get people to change their position,” said Celeste Mac Dougall, an advocate for abortion rights. “Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the most obvious example that opinions can change.”
Reporting by Daniel Politi from Buenos Aires and Ernesto Londoño from Rio de Janeiro.