Argentina is about to make history as the first large Latin American country to legalize abortion.
His 72-member senate will meet on Tuesday to debate a bill that was passed by the House earlier this month to the delight of pro-choice activists.
Pro-choice and anti-abortion activists will gather in the square near the Buenos Aires Congress building on Tuesday afternoon and remain there until the early hours of Wednesday, when a vote is expected.
Argentine media projections suggest that the “green” field that presses for changes holds a small advantage over its “blue” opponents: 33 senators plan to support the legislation, while 32 will vote against. Five senators are officially undecided.
Mariela Belski, executive director of Amnesty International in Argentina, said she was confident that the “voluntary termination of pregnancy” bill would pass, sending a strong message to a region with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. “The numbers look very good,” she said.
Belski said she felt very happy and excited about what would be the culmination of a decades-long struggle for women’s rights activists.
“The day after tomorrow, this country will be a much better place than before,” she said. “This country will be better for my daughter and the younger generations, so I am very happy that this will happen.”
Claudia Piñeiro, a writer and pro-choice activist, said: “This will be a transcendental and unforgettable moment, something that we have been waiting for at the end of a very difficult year for everyone.
“I just hope that the Senate realizes that there is no turning back now. The women’s movement will not allow them to decide more about our bodies, about our health, nor will they continue to force us to resort to illegal abortion.
“We still have to endure their pointless arguments that we need to have children to populate the nation, as if we were nothing more than reproduction machines, nothing more than a womb. That will change tomorrow. I have no doubt about that. “
An earlier attempt to legalize abortion was rejected by the Argentine Senate in August 2018, with many blaming then President Mauricio Macri for his failure to support change.
This time, however, the country’s leftist leader, Alberto Fernández, and his vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, defended the legislation and reportedly struggled to convince senators to support it.
Political analyst Andrés Malamud said that two important things have changed since the 2018 vote. “One is that the government now has a majority in the Senate,” he said. “And the second most important thing is that the current president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, is behind the project, because legal abortion was an electoral promise.”
While activists are optimistic, Malamud said it would be impossible to predict the outcome until the last minute.
“Although the government holds the majority of the votes, some of its senators are likely to vote against the bill. The outcome will then depend on the pro-abortion minority within the opposition bloc, which is delaying in announcing how it will vote just to deny the government the political success of approving abortion for as long as possible. “