Argentina has announced that it will drop criminal charges against women accused of having an abortion following the government’s historic decision to legalize the procedure.
The announcement offers hope to women, mostly poor and marginalized, who face criminal sanctions. But persistent problems, like obstetric violence and sexism in the justice system, show that the fight for reproductive justice is not over, according to activists.
The new law, passed on December 30, allows abortion for any reason during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, making Argentina the largest country in Latin America to widely allow the procedure. It explicitly covers anyone with the ability to gestate, including transgender and non-binary people.
It is a major achievement for women’s rights in a region where the Catholic Church has a strong influence.
Women rarely spend years in prison on abortion charges in Argentina, but there have been some horrible exceptions. In the conservative province of Tucumán, Belén (fictitious name) spent almost three years behind bars after suffering a miscarriage before a team led by feminist lawyer Soledad Deza managed to reverse his conviction.
“These almost three years that I was in prison were a very painful time for me, because it was horrible to be a prisoner for something I hadn’t done,” said Belén in a written note.
And even when hospitals don’t report patients to the police, women who seek treatment for abortion sometimes end up receiving cruel and degrading treatment.
Analía Ruggero was admitted to a hospital outside Buenos Aires at the age of 22, when she suffered complications from an abortion that she had self-induced using pills. When doctors found out she had an abortion, they initially refused to treat her, but they also said that if she went elsewhere, she could get an infection and die. Eventually, Ruggero was admitted, but as they worked, the medical team whispered insults to her. “The nurse was injecting me and saying quietly, ‘You had an abortion! You are trash, who do you think is coming here? ‘”
Then, Ruggero was left to recover in a bed without sheets or blankets in a corner of the infirmary that was infested with cockroaches.
Ruggero was very happy with the new law. “Now, if the first nurse I went to doesn’t want to do this, there is a line of doctors behind her who are willing to do that,” she said.
It is not clear how many women will have their cases closed as a result of the new law. A recent report – by the Argentine human rights group Cels, defenders of the rights to abortion and the Centro Universitario San Martín – identified 1,532 abortion cases in the past eight years that could potentially be covered. But not all provinces responded to the researchers’ request for information, and other activists say the total is likely to be substantially higher.
“All women who have been criminalized … will have the benefit of having their cases filed, because there is a more favorable retroactive application of criminal law,” said Argentine Minister for Women, Gender and Diversity, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta.
Activists are now demanding an investigation into the issue of women who may have been prosecuted for a more serious crime, such as murder, after having an abortion.
The Cels report identified several women serving long prison sentences for crimes such as aggravated homicide after experiencing obstetric problems, such as stillbirths and spontaneous abortions in late pregnancy. Most were extremely poor.
María Laura Garrigós, Undersecretary for Penitentiary Affairs at the Argentine Ministry of Justice, said that it is possible for women to be arrested for homicide after abortions, especially in the more conservative provinces of northern Argentina, although these cases generally exceed the 14-week limit. “It is a matter of interpretation – when the fetus ceases to be a fetus,” she said. “Generally, this is a case law that comes from men,” she said. “Judges in general tend to be men.”
The challenge now will be to ensure that women’s legal right to decide on their bodies is maintained in practice. “I know women who have been working on this for 50 years. These structures will not only rest, they will continue to fight to solve this type of problem ”, said Garrigós. “This is the progress we are making against patriarchy.”