Following pressure from pro-abortion groups, the president of Argentina announced Tuesday that he would make good on his campaign promise to legalize abortion in the country.
According to MSN, President Alberto Fernández told Radio Metro that his administration is working on the finishing touches to a bill that will be sent to Congress. Currently, abortion is legal in Argentina only in cases of rape or if the mother’s health or life are in danger. Abortion — the intentional and deliberate killing of a child before birth — is never truly medically necessary.)
“I don’t want this theme to become another dispute among Argentines,” said Fernández. “We respect everyone, I don’t want this to generate a new debate.” However, this is unlikely in the predominantly Catholic country, where many citizens hold deep pro-life beliefs that all human beings are worthy of life. This year, 400,000 Argentines attended the 2020 March for Life online.
In 2018, under then-president Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s Congress passed a bill to legalize abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, but the Senate voted it down after pro-lifers mobilized to convince the Senate not to pass it. Macri’s pro-life stance may have also played a part in the Senate’s decision.
In November 2019, then-President-Elect Fernández vowed to put pressure on legislators to legalize abortion as soon as he took office in December. Then in March 2020, he said he would send a bill to Congress within ten days that would make Argentina the first major country in Latin America to legalize abortion. The COVID-19 pandemic then struck, putting those plans on hold.
Pro-abortion groups including The International Planned Parenthood Federation have been working with pro-abortion groups within Argentina to help put the pressure on the government to expand abortion even during a global pandemic. Pro-abortion pressure during the pandemic has proven dangerous already. The United States and the United Kingdom saw the use of the abortion pill expanded during the nation’s lockdown, a practice that has proven dangerous in the UK where two women have died as a result.
If Argentina legalizes elective abortion, that decision could have a ripple effect across Latin America, allowing a window of opportunity for other pro-abortion groups to put pressure on their own governments to legalize the killing of preborn children.
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