What to Know About Argentina’s Vote on Abortion

Argentina’s Senate is set to debate a bill Wednesday that would legalize abortion for pregnancies up to 14 weeks. The vote, in a predominantly Catholic nation that is also the home of Pope Francis, is expected to reverberate throughout the region.

If the bill passes and is signed into law, Argentina will become the most populous nation to legalize abortion in Latin America, a region where strict abortion laws are the norm and where Catholic teaching has steered policy for decades.

Now, abortion in Argentina is allowed only in cases of rape or if the pregnancy poses a risk to the mother’s health. Women getting abortions can be charged with a crime and imprisoned under the current law, although that happens very rarely.

Here’s what you need to know about the debate.

The effort to loosen the country’s abortion laws is decades old, but it got a boost from the movement Ni Una Menos (Not One Less), which was formed in 2015 to raise awareness about violence against women.

Ni Una Menos helped put a feminist agenda on the map in Argentina, and activists soon turned their attention to the passage of broad legal protections for women. A green handkerchief, long associated with the effort to legalize abortion, became ubiquitous in their current campaign.

The size and the intensity of abortion-rights demonstrations grew over several months, culminating in huge crowds that gathered in June as the lower house of Congress passed a measure legalizing abortion. Even now, in Argentina’s winter, people have taken to the streets in support of the bill, sometimes bringing Buenos Aires to a standstill.

Despite a swell of support in cities, opposition to the bill is strong in rural areas. Conservative Catholics and evangelicals, rallying with blue handkerchiefs, have campaigned for the abortion ban to remain in place.

The Senate vote appears to be the deciding factor. Though debate will begin Wednesday, a vote is not expected until early Thursday.

The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, narrowly passed the bill in June. President Mauricio Macri, a conservative who personally opposes abortion, has said he will sign the measure into law if it is passed in Congress.

Opposition has become more organized since the Chamber of Deputies approval. Some senators who had been expected to support the legislation now say they will not. Though the vote is expected to be close, the recent shifts have dimmed the bill’s chances.

Senators could also decide to amend parts of the bill, in which case it would go back to the lower house.

The current measure would decriminalize abortion and allow the procedure during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. After that, a woman could legally end a pregnancy if it was the result of rape, if her life and health were at risk, or if the fetus had a condition incompatible with life.

Even if the bill is defeated, the issue is unlikely to go away because of the groundswell of support it generated. Similar women’s movements have sprung up in neighboring countries, suggesting the debate will continue in the region as well.

Abortion laws in Latin America are some of the most restrictive in the world.

Only Cuba and Uruguay have legalized abortion. Abortion laws in Mexico are determined state by state; Mexico City adopted legislation in 2007 allowing women to have abortions in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

A handful of countries make some exceptions to bans on abortion. Last year, for instance, Chile added three exceptions to its ban: in the case of rape or incest; if the mother’s life is at risk; or if the fetus has a fatal impairment.

Under current Argentine law, in place since 1921, abortion is legal only in cases of rape or if the pregnancy poses a risk to the woman’s health.

But that doesn’t mean women in Argentina are not having abortions. No official numbers are available, but Health Minister Adolfo Rubinstein has estimated there are more than 350,000 clandestine abortions every year. Human rights groups put the number higher, around 500,000 a year.

Many clandestine procedures are carried out with limited medical oversight. Complications from these abortions are the leading cause of maternal deaths in the country, researchers say, accounting for 18 percent of all maternal deaths in Argentina. About 45,000 to 60,000 women are hospitalized each year due to complications from these procedures.

The women’s rights movement has grown in Chile, where President Michelle Bachelet extracted support last year from a deeply divided Congress for exceptions to its outright ban on abortions. The election of a new, right-wing president, Sebastián Piñera, may signal a turn away from an expansion of access to the procedure. Still, thousands of people rallied in Santiago last month to demand an overhaul of abortion laws, even adopting the green handkerchiefs popularized in Argentina.

In Brazil, deeply conservative and home to the world’s largest population of Catholics, change has been slower. This month, Brazil’s supreme court held a rare, two-day public hearing to consider whether its abortion laws were at odds with constitutional protections.

Like many countries in Latin American, Brazil forbids the termination of pregnancies with a few exceptions, including in cases of rape and when the woman’s life is at risk. Women’s rights activists hope the court’s hearing will set off a nationwide debate, but no legislation is on the horizon.

Even as the proportion of Catholics in Argentina drops — from 87 percent in 1995 to 65 percent this year, according to poll from Latinobarómetro — the pope remains a powerful force in the country.

In March, Francis wrote a letter to the Argentine people urging them to prioritize the “defense of life and justice,” which many saw as a reminder of the church’s opposition to abortion. More recently, at a meeting in Rome, the pope denounced abortion as the “white glove” equivalent of the Nazi-era eugenics program.