29 Argentina, the Catholic Church, strongly linked to the state — has much power. It receives millions in state funding. With our taxes we pay the salaries of priests and subsidize their private schools. All while they themselves are exempt from taxes! The Catholic Church historically has consistently opposed the extension of the rights of the oppressed. They were against the law that prohibited slavery, against the law of compulsory schooling, against the law on women voting, divorce, marriage for same-sex couples, against sex education. Now all its sectors, from the most reactionary to the progressive “priests for the poor,” are opposed to the legalization of abortion. With the Argentine Pope Francis at their head, they lobbied strongly against it and were defeated. But it was also the other churches, especially the evangelical ones, which were defeated. Particularly following the exposure of terrible child abuse by Catholic priests, which was then covered up by the hierarchy, these churches have gained a lot of influence, especially among the poorest sectors. This victory strengthens us for the next struggle we have before us: the separation of church and state.
Concessions to the Reactionaries
Celebrating this triumph should not make us lose sight of the fact that the new law is not the one that was collectively drafted by La Campaña, but one drawn up by President Alberto Fernandez which contains several negative aspects that were reinforced at each stage of the bill’s passage. In the face of the massive Green Tide, with the population increasingly in favor of abortion rights and his opponent for the presidency, Mauricio Macri, against it, Alberto Fernandez was forced to include legal abortion in his campaign promises in 2019. This was a promise he tried to break all the way through 2020. First, he cast aside the bill drafted by La Campaña, and produced his own. To reassure the reactionaries, he linked the bill for the right to abortion to a law for the “protection of maternity” by which the state will subsidize for a thousand days any mother who decides to have her child. He used the advent of the pandemic as an excuse to avoid discussing the bill in Congress because, according to him, there were other more important issues. Once the quarantine was decreed, he said that the abortion bill could not proceed because this issue generates discord and we, the Argentines, must be united against the virus. And besides, thousands of people would mobilize in the streets, breaking the quarantine. In the middle of the year and when the quarantine was being relaxed, his new excuse was that the health system was not prepared. His final excuse was to say that in 2020 there was no time to deal with the issue. But, as December approached, and with the need to vote on the pension adjustment requested by the IMF, he decided to allow the abortion law to be discussed at the same time as the pension adjustment law. The focus of the debate thus shifted from something regressive to something
progressive. Once the bill was presented, more negative modifications were made to it, the most serious being to facilitate “conscientious objection.” This allows clinics and private health institutions to refuse to carry out the termination of a pregnancy if all their professionals, protected by their religious beliefs, declare themselves to be objectors. This is very serious, especially in the villages in the interior of the country where there is a shortage of doctors. This is already being used by anti-choice groups to mobilize non-compliance with the law, as happened recently in the province of San Juan, where one of the two largest public hospitals said they would not perform terminations because all of their gynecologists are conscientious objectors. La Campaña’s original proposal not only did not include conscientious objection but prohibited it. On the other hand, the approved law penalizes any pregnant person who receives an abortion after the 14th week of pregnancy with prison sentences of three months to one year. The La Campaña proposal did not include any penalties. Then, at the last moment and when no more modifications could be made, the President committed himself to remove from Article 4(b) the “integral health” of the pregnant person as a legitimate cause for abortion after 14 weeks. This casts aside, for example, psychological or social health and violates the concept of integral health established by the WHO and ratified by Argentina in the international conventions on human rights. Unfortunately, the leadership of La Campaña, politically connected to the ruling Frente de Todos party, let all these setbacks pass by without calling for mobilization throughout the year. Mobilization was necessary to put pressure on the government and, with the proper social distancing and in compliance with health protocols, it was possible, as demonstrated by other sectors that took to the streets for their rights. In this way, the government, only feeling the active pressure of the anti-choice sectors and with the excuse that concessions were necessary to obtain the votes in Congress, gave in more and more. This is a false argument anyway, since the Frente de Todos has a majority in the Senate. If they really had political will they could have voted on the full La Campaña bill as a bloc, as they did on the pension adjustment law to obey the IMF!
We Need Organization and Socialist Feminism
Regardless of the limitations of the law which was passed, this triumph strengthens the Green Tide that continues to spread and is gaining the support of more people who were previously against abortion and now have changed their position. This was demonstrated by the small numbers of people who have been mobilized by the anti-abortion sector, and even in the provinces where the church has the most weight, these sectors are increasingly in retreat. The base of the movement is aware that this victory is not a gift from the government, but a result of mobilization and
