28.03.2024

Argentina legalises abortion in landmark vote

Argentina has become the first major Latin American country to legalise abortion after a lengthy campaign by women’s rights activists.

Abortion has previously only been allowed in Argentina if the pregnancy is due to rape or in instances when the mother’s health or life is in danger.

The Senate voted by 38 in favour to 29 against with one abstention to approve legislation after a drawn-out debate which started at 4pm on Tuesday.

Activists cheered and embraced each other outside the congress in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires’ when the verdict was announced in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The new legislation, which allows women to have an abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy,  was passed by Argentina’s lower house earlier in the month.

Attempts to legalise abortion were strongly opposed by the Catholic Church in Argentina where pregnancy terminations are a highly divisive issue.

Alberto Fernández, the Argentinian president who introduced the bill legalising abortion, has said the new legislation would ultimately save lives, as more than 38,000 women are forced to go to hospital each year after illegal terminations go wrong and more than 3,000 have died since 1983.

A bill legalising abortion was rejected by a close margin by the predominantly Roman Catholic country’s senate after getting the approval of the congress back in 2018.

The latest legislation is the ninth bill in the past 15 years to tackle the nation’s highly restrictive abortion laws which feminist campaigners have been striving to overturn for over three decades.

All four senators who previously said they were unsure of whether to vote for the legislation cast a ballot in support of the bill.

Pope Francis, who is from Argentina, fired off a tweet hours before the 12-hour debate declaring “every outcast» as a «child of God”.

“The Son of God was born an outcast, in order to tell us that every outcast is a child of God,” he said. “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.”

Earlier in the month, a doctor who provides abortions in Argentina told The Independent she has witnessed women arrive at the health centre in desperate situations after having to resort to unsafe backstreet abortions.

Dr Betiana Olearo, who works in Cordoba in central Argentina, said: “I remember a woman dying in a health centre I was working in because of having a clandestine abortion. This was impactful. Not just for her family. But for her community. She left behind four children. They remained alone after she died.”

A recent report by Argentina’s Access to Safe Abortion Network found more than 7,000 girls aged between 10 and 14 in Argentina delivered babies from 2016 to 2018, with the pregnancies often the byproduct of rape.

Mr Fernandez, who was sworn in as president last December, pledged to make abortion legal during his first annual address to congress. The president argued the current law had “condemned many women, generally of limited resources, to resort to abortive practices in absolute secrecy, putting their health and sometimes their lives at risk”.

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