By Interim Staff

By a 131-117 vote, with six abstentions, Argentina’s lower house passed a pro-abortion bill after 20 hours of contentious debate. The bill now goes to the senate.

President Alberto Fernandez’s left-wing Frente de Todos (Everybody’s Front) has only a minority in the Chamber of Deputies, but has a majority in the Senate so the bill, which liberalizes the country’s abortion, is expected to pass.

The bill would allow unborn babies to be aborted for any reason up to 14 weeks of pregnancy and later in cases of rape or dangers to the mother’s life or health. It is similar to a 2018 bill that was passed by the Chamber of Deputies before being defeated in the Senate. The current bill was amended to include conscience protection for health care workers and parental consent for minors under 13 seeking an abortion and an adult’s written consent for girls 14-16 years old; these compromises from the government seem to have garnered the necessary support to pass.

Argentina currently prohibits abortions except in cases of rape or threats to the mother’s life.

Pro-life demonstrators in the streets of Buenos Aires.

The Guardian reported that “The televised announcement of the ‘resulta afirmativo’ sparked carnival-like scenes of joy outside Argentina’s national congress, where thousands of activists had been anxiously following the marathon session on big screens.” A Buenos Aries news website, Infobae, called it “a tsunami of joy.” But the Associated Press reported that there were equal numbers of pro-abortion and pro-life demonstrators outside the legislature, the latter expressing much disappointment as the former were celebrating.

Crux reported that Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox, Muslim and Evangelical Protestant leaders gathered for a prayer service before the vote to ask God to protect unborn babies and stop the pro-abortion bill.

“It’s clear that the worst of this 2020 is not COVID-19,” Bishop Sergio Buenanueva of San Francisco, Argentina, said in a statement.

A coalition of Argentine pro-life groups, Unidad Provida, called for pro-lifers to “go to the streets to demand rejection of the abortion law” and oppose “the president’s contempt for life.” Unidad Provida is urging lawmakers to drop the bill and enact policies that support “the care of the two lives that are at stake in a vulnerable pregnancy” instead.

Some pro-life deputies questioned whether abortion could be constitutional, saying it violated the American Convention on Human Rights, which establishes the right to life from the moment of conception.

Graciela Camano, a deputy from the left-right Federal Consensus coalition, said that abortion is a sign of the “political inability to solve the problems of society.” She said in a speech in the chamber, “Instead of solving the causes, the lack of education, the poverty, the shortcomings, we come to propose that the solution of the problem remain in the private sphere of women, with the aggravating factor that the man has nothing to say.”

The Associated Press reported that the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion, which has sought to legalize abortion in the country for more than a decade, considers Argentina a beachhead in South America, hoping that other countries on the continent will liberalize their abortion laws. Debora Diniz, an abortion activist from Brazil, was quoted in The Guardian: “This is a really important decision, not just for Argentina but for the whole of Latin America.”

“I feel really, really excited and happy,” said Mariela Belski, Amnesty International’s executive in Argentina, of the bill passing the Chamber of Deputies.

The Argentina senate was expected to take up the bill in late December.