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ARGENTINA:
Promising Signs
in Ongoing Struggle for Safe,
Legal Abortion
Marcela
Valente
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) -
Twenty-year-old Romina Tejerina
is scheduled to stand trial in
June in Argentina, and could
very likely be sentenced to life
in prison for stabbing to death
her newborn daughter.
Tejerina, who lives in the
northwestern Argentine province
of Jujuy, became pregnant when
she was raped by a neighbour.
She has already spent two years
in prison awaiting trial. The
neighbour who raped her was
never punished for his crime.
While this case is a
particularly tragic one, it is
symptomatic of the desperation
felt by thousands of women in
Latin American countries where
abortion is illegal, even when
pregnancy is the result of
sexual assault.
Experts believe that Tejerina's
trial will end with her
receiving the maximum sentence
applicable in Argentina. In the
meantime, her rapist, a man
twice her age, was cleared of
any wrongdoing 20 days after the
case was reported, and has
appeared on television claiming
that he had wanted the baby girl
to be given his last name.
In Argentina, abortion is only
legally permitted in cases of
rape when the woman is deemed
mentally disturbed or retarded,
or when the health or life of
the expectant mother is
endangered.
But in spite of these
restrictions, the Ministry of
Health estimates that 500,000
pregnancies are terminated every
year through clandestine
abortions, which have become the
leading cause of maternal
mortality in Argentina. The same
holds true in neighbouring
Uruguay, where abortion is also
illegal except in certain highly
limited circumstances.
In November 2004, Argentine
Health Minister Ginés González
García admitted that abortion
had become such a major health
problem in the country that it
would be wise to begin
discussing its legalisation.
His stance, which is not shared
by President Néstor Kirchner,
drew furious opposition from the
Catholic Church and conservative
sectors. But others hailed it as
a positive step forward.
The minister was the driving
force behind the country's first
sexual and reproductive health
legislation, through which
contraceptives are provided free
of charge in public hospitals.
He also spearheaded the
publication of a manual to
ensure adequate care and
treatment for women who come to
hospital emergency rooms
suffering the after-effects of
improperly conducted clandestine
abortions.
Dilation and curettage (scraping
of the uterine walls), required
as a result of an incomplete
abortion, is the second most
frequent reason for
hospitalisation of women of
child-bearing age in Argentina.
Non-governmental organisations
maintain that poor, marginalised
women suffer mistreatment at the
hands of doctors and nurses who
view them with contempt for
having chosen to interrupt their
pregnancies.
The ”Guide for Improving
Post-Abortion Care” will be
distributed to all of the
country's health care centres in
June. The manual urges health
care professionals to provide
”humane” and ”unprejudiced”
medical treatment for these
cases, and recommends the use of
the suction technique to clean
out the uterus, because unlike
dilation and curettage, it does
not require general anaesthesia.
Numerous women's rights
organisations with a long
history of fighting for the
legalisation of abortion have
decided to seize the
unprecedented opportunity
offered by a minister open to
their views.
This Friday, on the eve of the
International Day of Action for
Women's Health, a coalition of
women's groups from throughout
the country launched the
National Campaign for the Right
to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion
in Argentina.
Maria José Lubertino, the
director of the Women's Social
and Political Institute and one
of the coordinators of the
campaign, told IPS that it will
include the organisation of
workshops to provide information
and promote reflection and
debate on the issue.
The participants will also be
collecting signatures to call on
Congress to adopt a law
legalising abortion, or at the
very least, legislation aimed in
this direction, she added.
”The minister has given official
legitimacy to a debate that the
women's movement has been
promoting for 20 years,”
Lubertino stressed.
The campaign will wrap up on
Sept. 28, which has been
designated the Day for the
Decriminalisation and
Legalisation of Abortion in
Latin America and the Caribbean,
and the signatures collected
will be handed over to Congress
two months later.
”Women's groups support any
proposed legislation that
entails progress towards the
legalisation of abortion,” noted
Lubertino, alluding to
initiatives that currently have
greater support and are aimed at
extending legal authorisation
for abortion to all cases of
rape, or when it is determined
that the foetus cannot survive
outside the womb.
A survey conducted earlier this
year, commissioned by the
Argentine branch of the
Friedrich Ebert Foundation,
found that 76 percent of
respondents were in favour of
the legalisation of abortion for
women who had been raped.
Brazilian law already allows for
the termination of rape-induced
pregnancy, although women
seeking an abortion on these
grounds must frequently contend
with obstacles posed by some
health care professionals and
complicated legal requirements.
The survey also indicated that a
high percentage of respondents
felt that abortion should be
legal if it is determined that
the foetus suffers a deformity
that will make life outside the
womb impossible.
When such a diagnosis is made
today, the woman is obliged to
carry the pregnancy to term and
go through the process of
delivery and childbirth, even
when it is known that the baby
will die within minutes.
On the other hand, support
decreases significantly when the
reasons for terminating a
pregnancy are less extreme. Only
19 percent believed that women
should be able to have an
abortion because they do not
want to have a child, while 18
percent felt it was justified in
cases where pregnancy results
from the failure of a birth
control method.
Nevertheless, 70 percent said
they believed that most women
with unwanted pregnancies
already resort to abortion, even
though it is illegal.
When Tejerina was raped, she was
too ashamed to tell anyone, and
was afraid that no one would
believe her. When she realised
that she had missed her period
for several months, she finally
went to a doctor, who confirmed
that she was pregnant. He also
told her that he could not help
her, because abortion is
illegal.
Instead, she hid the pregnancy,
while trying every home remedy
and method she knew of to abort.
When she gave birth to a baby
girl in the bathroom of her home
in the seventh month of
pregnancy, the desperate
teenager attempted to continue
keeping her secret. In what
psychiatric experts have
qualified as a ”psychotic
episode”, she killed the newborn
by stabbing it 17 times.
”I didn't know what to do,” she
told the police who questioned
her after the tragic incident.
The vast majority of Argentines
believe that in cases like
these, women should have
recourse to safe, legal
abortion. Now it is up to
Congress to support this stance
by turning it into law.
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