Alberto Fernandez vows to send bill legalizing abortion to Argentine Congress
Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernández announced Sunday he will send a proposal to legalize abortion to Congress ‘as soon as possible’ once he takes office on December 10.
“We should respect the woman who feels she has the right to make decisions, like abortion, about her own body - as much as we do the woman who feels God doesn’t permit her to have an abortion,” Fernández said in an interview with the progressive Buenos Aires daily Página/12.
“I would like the debate to be not one between progressives and conservatives: It’s a problem of public health that we should resolve.”
A public health problem
Argentina's restrictive abortion laws date from 1921 - and its statutory exceptions for rape or to save the mother's life are often flouted by conservative judges and even doctors.
But despite the legal hurdles, over 300,000 abortions are performed annually - up to 50,000 of which result in dangerous complications, and, in 2017, in 30 deaths.
Bills legalizing abortion have been debated in Argentina's Congress eight times since 1983 - most recently last year, when a bill legalizing abortion on demand up to the 14th week was passed by the Lower House on June 14; but was defeated in the Senate on August 8, by 38 votes to 31.
Outgoing President Mauricio Macri, whom Fernández defeated amid the worst economic crisis in two decades, has long opposed abortion rights.
Macri's right-wing ‘Let's Change’ caucus in Congress mostly voted against the 2018 bill.
“Since 1983 I've been pointing out that punishing a woman for an abortion is barbarous,” Fernández said in a May interview when he began his presidential campaign.
“This is a serious public health problem - not a criminal matter.”
At: https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/law-to-decriminalise-abortion-will-go-to-congress-as-soon-as-possible-fernandez-says.phtml
Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernández appears with abortion rights activists at Thursday's presentation of Soy Belén (I am Belén) - a documentary about a young woman in the country's conservative northwest who spent nearly 3 years in prison for a miscarriage.
Abortion rights have sparked heated debate in this largely Catholic nation of 45 million. But to Fernández, a law professor, it should be a public health issue.
“To all those who object to abortion rights, my advice is simple: don't have one.”
