Argentina: Partial approval of the "Law for legal, safe, and free abortion"

The bill for "Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion" passed the Chamber of Deputies with 29 votes in favor, 25 against, and 1 abstention. After years of fighting against gender violence and for social and political rights, the women's movement "Not One Less," exemplary in Latin America, won an important battle, although the Senate still has the final say.

The attempt by opponents of the law to shift the focus from the legalization of abortion to a debate about abortion itself has failed. The issue at hand was creating a law to decriminalize abortion, which is already widely practiced by women, including many teenagers, in clandestine and dangerous ways, for various reasons, from rape to unwanted pregnancies (for private reasons), which deserve social respect and not criminalization by the State. The bill proposed by the Women's Movement encompasses other points, from sex education in schools and access to contraceptives to avoid abortion, in addition to legal abortion to avoid death. It concerns the democratic right of women to own their own bodies and their health, with guarantees from the State, under a safe, professional, and free medical structure, allowing a dignified option for the poorest sectors of the population (as in Cuba, most European countries, and the USA itself, where abortion is legal).

But the central point, the decisive factor for this victory of the opposition and the Women's movement, was the pressure from the streets, the moving demonstration of a million women (about 80%), mostly young teenagers (70% of the women), in front of Congress, self-organized, coming from the neighborhoods, from the schools, in the polar cold, with their green scarves (symbol of the feminist movement), into the early hours of the morning until the vote on the bill this morning. This was not just any demonstration, nor was it simply feminist. Her youthful decision and composition shook hesitant deputies, or pro-government deputies who saw in her the cry of a daughter, and resolved to differentiate themselves from the hypocritical majority of "Cambiemos," those who forgo public services to have an abortion, and who dare to speak in the name of "life" against the "fetal murderers," promoters of the Law. Life is being stifled at the table of poor children, whose numbers are visibly increasing, and who die of cold without heating, victims of the exorbitant tariffs imposed by Macri. The "Law of legal, safe, and free abortion" is for life. The tears and cries of victory from the teenagers and women were an unprecedented act of freedom, justice, and joy in being able to emerge from clandestinity; an act of victory at a time when Macri and the IMF are obscuring the future of young people and children. These young teenage girls, with their unparalleled organizational skills, through their songs and cries of struggle, represent the clamor of an entire people: legal abortion, work, health, public schools, food, energy, transportation, and human rights.

Here is a slogan that circulated here: "We are daughters of the white scarves and mothers of the green scarves." Women, with the persistence of Eva Perón, Cristina Kirchner, the mothers and grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the "Not One Less" movement, and Milagro Salas, signaled their role in society, rejecting all forms of exploitation and injustice. The partial victory of this law today will be an encouragement to youth, women, and men to unite in the transformative struggles against financial capital that continue unabated in Argentina; it will be, and already is being, an encouragement to union leaders and parliamentarians to unite and advance popular mobilization.

If at first, in January, Macri dared to raise the issue of legalizing abortion to distract from the imposition of the pension "Reforms" last December, or the recent dealings with the IMF, the plan backfired, because the women's movement seized the abortion issue, drafted a bill, to gauge and exercise its mobilization capacity and enter the field of struggle on a wider range of issues against the government in the coming days.

Yesterday was a social volcano, with a female face, polar temperatures. The struggle continues even more fiercely against the adjustments imposed by the agreements with the IMF. While the people still celebrate the law on legal abortion and the start of the World Cup, the government is trying to downplay the frightening rise in the dollar and the revelation of previously undisclosed adjustments: 500,000 new state unemployments, a freeze on public sector hiring for the next two years, and reductions in subsidies for transportation, gas, and electricity. Today, there is a national general strike by truck drivers (CGT) and teachers (CTA) demanding a salary increase of more than 27% (and not the government's 15%) to compensate for inflation, and against the IMF. All the united labor unions are calling for a national general strike on June 25th with broad mass mobilization against the adjustments of Macri and the IMF.