ABORTION REFORM BILL REJECTED BY SENATORS

Five months after being presented by President Mauricio Macri in his stateof-the-nation speech, the legalisation of abortion was rejected by the Senate in the small hours of Thursday morning. The 72-seat Senate turned back the bill approved by their lower house colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies in mid-June by a 38-31 vote with two abstentions and one absentee. Outside Congress the numbers were reversed with the massive demonstration by the green camp favouring abortion considerably outnumbering the light-blue pro-life columns. Ruling out a referendum, the government is now falling back on a Plan B of Criminal Code reforms to end the penalisation of abortion without legalising it, a proposal which will be presented in the course of this month. Anticipating this week’s adverse outcome, some senators had tried to amend the lower house bill in this direction but, even if they eventually gained the support of their more adamant colleagues, they could not obtain sufficient committee signatures. So it was the original bill which suffered defeat last Thursday and now cannot return to Congress for what remains of the legislative year. Senate provisional president Federico Pinedo criticised the legislation for sacrificing consensus by mandating state funding and denying exemptions for hospitals on the grounds of conscience. But for many abortion advocates there is no Plan B – abortion on demand will come sooner or later.