‘The stigma has returned’: abortion access in turmoil in Javier Milei’s Argentina

Health workers fear the return of unsafe abortions as recent statements lead to a spike in doctors refusing to provide care

Harriet Barber in Buenos Aires, The Guardian
Mon 18 Mar 2024

Javier Milei’s anti-abortion rhetoric has prompted growing numbers of doctors in Argentina to refuse to carry out terminations, according to medical professionals across the country.

Since taking office in December, the self-described libertarian has used speeches to both global leaders and schoolchildren to condemn abortion as a “tragedy” and “aggravated murder”.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/mar/18/argentina-abortion-javier-milei


Argentina’s Milei tells school kids abortion is ‘murder’

Buenos Aires (AFP) – President Javier Milei said he considers abortion, which is legal in Argentina, to be "murder", in a speech to high school students on Wednesday.

March 6, 2024

The 53-year-old libertarian, who is known to be anti-abortion but has not publicly spoken about the issue at length since taking office, was addressing young people at a Catholic school in Buenos Aires where he had studied.

"I warn you that to me abortion is murder ... and I can prove it to you from a mathematical, philosophical and liberal perspective," he said in a speech two days before International Women's Day.

ontinued: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240306-argentina-s-milei-tells-school-kids-abortion-is-murder


By bus, car and plane, women journey across Latin America for abortions

By Marina Dias and Terrence McCoy
February 23, 2024

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — She’d taken an overnight bus from the countryside, then a train across the urban sprawl of São Paulo, and now she was staring out the plane window, head full of worry. There was a pink rosary in her pocket. But she didn’t see the point of praying. She feared she was a sinner, a criminal, and this trip, her first time out of Brazil, would be a secret she’d carry for the rest of her life.

Cristina was 35 years old. She was 11 weeks pregnant. She came from a conservative Christian family in a conservative Christian nation where abortion was largely illegal, so she’d decided to travel to a country where it was not and bring an end to the pregnancy she didn’t want.

Continued: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/23/brazil-latin-america-abortion-restrictions/


Under Milei, Far-Right Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Recriminalize Abortion in Argentina

One leftist lawmaker said that "we see deputies from La Libertad Avanza desperate to once again use the patriarchal reaction as a unifying element" to distract from the nation's economic woes.

BRETT WILKINS
Feb 08, 2024

Members of Argentinian President Javier Milei's far-right ruling coalition this week introduced a bill to recriminalize abortion, a proposal subsequently disavowed by the libertarian leader's office—for now.

Five deputies from Milei's La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) coalition—with 27-year-old Santa Fe lawmaker Rocío Bonacci spearheading the effort—are sponsoring the bill to overturn Law 27610, which Argentina's National Congress approved in December 2020 at the culmination of a decades-long fight by reproductive rights advocates.

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/news/far-right-argentine-lawmakers-introduce-bill-to-recriminalize-abortion


Argentina – The Abortion Plot

A newly translated novel by the Argentinean writer Sara Gallardo provides a missing link in the history of abortion literature.

By S. C. Cornell
December 9, 2023

In the nineteenth century, when a character had premarital sex, you held your breath not for an abortion but for a wedding. Think of “Pride and Prejudice,” where Lydia’s child marriage comes as a great relief. The marriage plot relegates the actual having of children to the last page, just after the rice is thrown and the reader assured that our heroine will be happy and rich. If great Western literature of the time does allude to abortion, it does so subtly or with plausible deniability. The first time I read “War and Peace,” I managed to miss the suggestion that Hélène died of an overdose of abortifacient drugs. In “Middlemarch,” when Rosamond goes horseback riding against the explicit wishes of her doctor husband and subsequently miscarries, Eliot hastens to explain that this was a “misfortune” and that “there were plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding.”

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-abortion-plot


Psychological arguments helped Argentines win abortion rights, scholar says

Tue, 12/05/2023

LAWRENCE – In Argentina, perhaps the most psychoanalyzed country in the world, the rhetoric of psychology proved important in the push for a 2020 federal law that for the first time guaranteed free and safe access to abortion through 14 weeks of pregnancy.

A new scholarly paper on the subject published by Verónica Garibotto, professor of Latin American literary & cultural studies at the University of Kansas, has come out at a time when those reproductive rights are being targeted by new president-elect Javier Milei, who opposes abortion.

Continued: https://today.ku.edu/2023/12/05/psychological-arguments-help-argentines-win-abortion-rights


Argentina’s new leader is a snake-oil salesman with extreme views on abortion, gay rights and more. I fear for my country

After his landslide victory in the presidential election, Javier Milei is threatening to undo 40 years of democracy in Argentina

Uki Goñi
Tue 21 Nov 2023

Anti-woke libertarian Javier Milei’s landslide win in Argentina’s presidential election poses not only a worrying question for my country’s fragile 40-year-old democracy, but could also embolden other extreme libertarians in the US and Europe in their own anti-woke wars.

Milei is often described as an outsider – but his revolutionary persona has been carefully crafted by one of the country’s richest men. Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian plugged the wild-haired economist relentlessly on his A24 media network as an antidote to those he views as the dominant “political caste”. Milei has accused the Peronist establishment of being “socialist” because they had legalised gay marriage and abortion, put on trial and sentenced the perpetrators of Argentina’s genocidal 1976-83 dictatorship and threatened to impose new taxes on wealth.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/21/argentina-new-leader-extreme-abortion-gay-rights-javier-milei


‘Ghosts from the past’: fears of abortion setback after Milei wins in Argentina

Newly elected president and far-right libertarian has vowed to repeal country’s 2020 landmark legalisation of abortion

Ashifa Kassam and Josefina Salomón in Buenos Aires
Mon 20 Nov 2023

Three years after Argentina made history as the first large Latin American country to legalise abortion, women’s rights campaigners are gearing up to again go to battle after the election of Javier Milei as president.

“It’s a very bleak picture,” said Soledad Deza of the Fundación Mujeres x Mujeres. “This is a government that is promising us greater inequality and – from the first minute – that the autonomy, sovereignty and independence of our bodies is not going to be supported by the state.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/20/argentina-milei-abortion-womens-rights


With Milei leading Argentina’s presidential race, abortion is on the line

Libertarian candidate and frontrunner Javier Milei has pledged to hold a referendum to repeal abortion access if elected.

By Natalie Alcoba
20 Oct 2023

Buenos Aires, Argentina – In Argentina, it can be hard to focus on anything but economics during an election year. With an annual inflation rate that has eclipsed 138 percent and a currency that has plunged in value, the dire financial outlook has once again dominated this year’s presidential campaign.

But as voters head to the polls on October 22, social issues are increasingly taking centre stage, in large part due to the popularity of far-right libertarian candidate Javier Milei.

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/20/with-milei-leading-argentinas-presidential-race-abortion-is-on-the-line


In Argentina, election fight brews over women’s rights and abortion

By Anna-Catherine Brigida
October 4, 2023

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina's presidential election race is putting abortion access and women's rights in the spotlight, sparking fierce debate in a country that has been a pioneer in expanding reproductive rights in Latin America.

The election frontrunner, economist Javier Milei, opposes abortion and wants to hold a referendum on whether the 2020 legalization of abortion before the 14th week of pregnancy should be repealed. He also wants to shut the ministry of women, gender and diversity, which he has called a type of "affirmative action" that is degrading towards women.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/argentina-election-fight-brews-over-womens-rights-abortion-2023-10-04/