Election brings new hope for access to abortion in Argentina

In a country as staunchly anti-abortion as Argentina, Sunday’s presidential election outcome signals a potential sea change for women’s rights in the notoriously restrictive country. Alberto Fernandez, from the center-left, ousted incumbent anti-choice President Mauricio Mauri, who defended his country’s denial of an abortion to an 11-year-old girl in February. Fernandez has said he supports legalizing abortion in the long run.

 During a debate among candidates in the run-up to the election, Fernandez said he was “in favor of decriminalizing abortion in order to prevent women and doctors from running afoul of the law and that it was necessary to ‘move towards legalizing’ abortion,” according to France 24. Aside from Fernandez, only one other presidential candidate had openly supported a woman’s right to choose, El Pais reported.

The election comes at a time in the country’s history in which the rise of the Evangelical movement, combined with the ongoing power of the Catholic Church, is clashing with a growing movement of pro-choice feminists. Known as the “green tide” because of the green handkerchiefs supporters wear, thousands have marched since 2015 as lawmakers attempted to bring a bill that would legalize abortion to Congress seven times. The last attempt ended in failure in August 2018; the bill made it narrowly through the lower house only to fail by a small margin in the senate.

Argentina’s ministry of health estimates that at least 350,000 illegal abortions are performed in Argentina every year, according to BBC, but, as with all violence against women, rights groups think that number is a serious underestimate. They put the real number at closer to 500,000. Abortion is only legal in in Argentina in cases of rape or when pregnancies endanger a mother’s life.

In February, an 11-year-old girl was forced to endure a caesarian section-like procedure to deliver her baby, who was not expected to survive. While the child was pregnant through rape and it was determined that the baby would put her mother’s life in danger, the province in which she resided refused to allow her to have an abortion, with the provincial health secretary insisting the girl wanted the child. A hospital psychologist, however, said she had told him to “remove what the old man put inside me.” President Mauri defended what many called the state’s “torture” of the girl.

Only two countries in the region allow abortion: Uruguay and Cuba. Parts of Mexico have also legalized abortion. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, seven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean—the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Suriname—do not allow abortion under any circumstances. At the same time, the region is the only in which the pregnancy rate for girls under age 15 is rising, the center reports.