Buenos Aires, Feb 7 (EFE).- Argentina’s far-right ruling coalition La Libertad Avanza has presented a draft bill to repeal the country’s abortion law in parliament, according to information on Wednesday.
Argentinian President Javier Milei delivers a speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, 07 February 2024. EFE/EPA/ABIR SULTAN
The bill, presented on Monday, calls for the repeal of the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Law and for abortion to be criminalized for both the woman and those who participate in the procedure.
The text does not present any defense in the event of rape, although it leaves sentencing to the judge’s discretion “in consideration of the reasons that prompted her to commit the crime, her subsequent attitude, and the nature the fact.”
The woman could be punished with prison terms of 1-3 years, it proposes.
According to the proposal signed by deputies Oscar Zago, head of the La Libertad Avanza bloc; Lilia Lemoine, an influencer and very close to President Javier Milei’s circle; and four other legislators, there could be sentences of 3-10 years for those who cause a woman’s abortion without her consent, and up to 15 in the event of the woman’s death.
In the case of consent, the penalties could be 1-4 years, which could increase to 6 years if the woman dies.
The text presented in the Chamber of Deputies is headed by the motto that the Milei Executive recently published in the Official Gazette: the declaration of 2024 as “Year of the defense of life, liberty and property.”
During his speech at the World Economic Forum held in January in Davos, Switzerland, the president attacked environmental and feminist agendas that, he said, socialism has managed to sneak into international organizations.
“The first of these new battles was the ridiculous and unnatural fight between man and woman. Libertarianism already establishes equality between the sexes,” said the libertarian economist, who concluded that “the only thing that this radical feminist agenda has resulted in is greater intervention by the State to hinder the economic process.”
Likewise, he questioned the “harmful ideas” of those who “maintain that human beings damage the planet and that it must be protected at all costs, even going so far as to advocate for population control or the bloody agenda of abortion.”
However, after that speech, presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni was consulted in his usual appearances at the Casa Rosada (seat of government) and stressed that the president was “focused on what is most urgent,” which is “straightening out Argentina.”
“(Repealing the abortion law) is not on the agenda today. With that definition given by the president we suspect that, at some point, it will be debated, but I am only making a guess based on the fragment of the Davos speech,” he stated.
Approved on Dec. 30, 2020 and promulgated on Jan. 14, 2021, Law 27,610 on the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy allows for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy up to the 14th week of gestation safely, legally and free of charge, always at a maximum 10 days from the request.
Beyond these 14 weeks, abortion is only allowed under two exceptions that have been in effect since the approval of the Penal Code in 1921: when the woman’s life is in danger or if the pregnancy was the result of rape.
In the last demonstration held in Argentina for the Day of Action for the Decriminalization of Abortion in Latin America, in September, in the middle of the electoral campaign, feminist groups expressed their fear that a possible far-right government would mean a setback in the achievements of the ‘green tide’. EFE
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