Women's right to abortion is at risk in Argentina. Javier Milei wants to repeal the law on voluntary abortion passed by the Argentine Congress at the end of 2020 after a large mobilization of feminist movements in the streets. Deputies from the far-right party La Libertad Avanza (LLA), led by Milei, presented this Wednesday a bill that classifies abortion as a crime and punishes women who decide to have an abortion with prison sentences.
Not only does the text represent a step backwards from the current law that allows women to have legal and free abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy, but it is even more restrictive than the Criminal Code in force between 1921 and 2020, because it does not authorize this even in cases of rape, but gives the judge the final word. The lawmakers argue that they decided to remove the reason for not punishing pregnancy for rape “because they understand that this has been systematically interpreted as a justification for the practice.”
The bill would penalize “a woman who arranges her own abortion or consents to another person arranging it” with a prison sentence of up to three years. In return, it provides for penalties of between one and four years for those professionals who help a woman terminate her pregnancy and penalties of between three and ten years for those who perform an abortion without the woman's consent. If the surrogate mother dies as a result of the procedure, the penalty can be increased to 15 years.
The text stipulates that an abortion is not a criminal offense only if the purpose is to avert an immediate danger to the life of the mother, “unless the danger can be averted by other means”.
Abortion is an issue that divides Argentine society. Congress debated it for the first time in 2018, during Mauricio Macri's government, and after approval by the Chamber of Deputies, it was ultimately rejected by the Senate. Legalization was approved at the end of 2020 with the clear support of then-President Alberto Fernández.
In these three years, almost 250,000 voluntary and legal abortions were performed in the public sector and maternal mortality fell by almost half: from 23 annual deaths in 2020 to 13 a year later.
The parliamentary initiative presented by LLA is no surprise. Milei and her vice president Victoria Villarruel had already spoken out harshly against legal abortion during the election campaign and had anticipated their desire to repeal the current law.
Smoke screen
The text sent to Congress is intended to divert attention from the harsh parliamentary defeat Milei suffered this week. The ruling party's star project, a document with 664 articles that provided the president with numerous tools and extraordinary powers to quickly dissolve the Argentine state, returned to the starting point this Tuesday after the opposition rejected several key points.
The governing party is clearly in the minority in both chambers: it only has eight of the 257 representatives and seven of the 72 senators. It is unlikely that he will receive enough support to resume a discussion that is affecting Argentine society amid the severe economic crisis that the country is going through, with the highest inflation in the world (211.4% in 2023) and an inflation of more than 40% polarized. of the population is in poverty.
LLA lawmakers consider it necessary to ban abortions because they believe that the crisis suffered by Argentina “is not only political or economic, but is fundamentally moral.” The project bears the signature of five MPs, including the head of the bloc in the House of Representatives Óscar Zago and the influencer and former Milei makeup artist Lilia Lemoine.
The presentation of the project provoked an immediate reaction from feminist movements. Public meetings were called this evening under the motto “Don’t take a step back” to organize against this government initiative.