Protests mark abortion vote
Argentine senate rejects legalising it
BUENOS AIRES: Argentina’s Senate yesterday rejected a bill to legalise elective abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, an issue that has divided the homeland of Pope Francis.
Lawmakers debated for more than 15 hours and voted 38-31 against the bill. The decision could echo across Latin America, where the Roman Catholic Church has lost influence and moral authority due to secularisation, an out-of-touch clerical caste and an avalanche of sex abuse scandals.
For long hours, thousands of supporters wearing green handkerchiefs that represent the effort to legalise abortion and opponents of the measure wearing light blue, braved the heavy rain and cold temperatures in Argentina’s winter to watch the debate on large screens set up outside Congress.
The demonstrations were l argely peaceful, but after the vote, small groups of protesters clashed with police, throwing firebombs and setting up flaming barricades. Police officers responded with tear gas.
The lower house had already passed the measure and conservative President Mauricio Macri had said he would sign it, even though he is anti-abortion.
In Argentina, abortion is only allowed in cases of rape and risks to a woman’s health. Thousands of women, most of them poor, are hospitalised each year for complications linked due to unsafe abortions —the main cause of maternal death.
Backers of the measure said legalising abortion would save the life of many women who now turn to dangerous illegal abortions. The Health Ministry estimated in 2016 that the country sees as many as half a million clandestine abortions each year, with dozens of women dying as a result. The Catholic Church and other groups opposed it, saying it violated Argentine law, which guarantees life from the moment of conception.
“There are positive points that have come out of this, first of all, that even when there are differing ways of thinking, there’s a square in peace right now, with thousands of people defending their convictions,’’ said Buenos Aires provincial Gov Maria Eugenia Vidal, who was against the measure. “There was talk of a green square and a light blue square. But the truth is that these are people who are right there next to each other, coexisting and defending what they believe to be the truth.’’
But the contentious issue has divided Argentines, pitting conservative doctors and the Catholic Church against feminist groups and physicians. Pope Francis this year denounced abortion as the “white glove’’ equivalent of the Nazi-era eugenics programme and urged families “to accept the children that God gives them.’’
Activists estimate that 3,000 women in Argentina have died of illegal abortions since 1983.