Argentina is on the verge of making history as the first major Latin American country to legalize abortion.
The 72-member senate will meet on Tuesday to discuss a bill approved by the lower house earlier this month to the delight of activists.
Preferential and anti-abortion campaigners will gather in the square near Buenos Aires’ congress building on Tuesday afternoon and stay there until the early hours of the morning for a vote.
Predictions in the Argentine media suggest that the ‘green’ camp pushing for change holds a slim lead over its ‘blue’ opponents: 33 senators are reportedly planning to support the legislation, while 32 will vote against it. Five senators are officially undecided.
Marniela Belski, executive director of Amnesty International in Argentina, said she was confident the bill would approve a voluntary abortion and send a loud message to a region with some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws . “The numbers look very good,” she said.
Belski said she felt overwhelmed with joy and excited about what would be the culmination of a decade-long struggle by women’s rights activists.
“The day after tomorrow this country will be a much better place than before,” she said. “This country will be better for my daughter and for the younger generations, so I’m so glad it’s going to happen.”
Claudia Piñeiro, a writer and preferred activist, said: ‘It will be a transcendental and memorable moment, after which we have been waiting for the end of a very difficult year for all.
“I just hope the senate realizes that there is no turning back now. The women’s movement no longer allows them to decide on our bodies, on our health, and to continue to force us to resort to clandestine abortions.
‘We still have to endure their senseless arguments that we should have children to populate the country, as if we are nothing but reproductive machines, nothing but a womb. That’s going to change tomorrow. I have no doubt about it. ”
An earlier attempt to legalize abortion was voted down by the Argentine Senate in August 2018, with many blaming then-President Mauricio Macri’s failure to support the change.
This time, however, the country’s left-wing leader, Alberto Fernández, and his vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, advocated the legislation and they allegedly struggled to convince senators to support the bill.
Political analyst Andrés Malamud said two important things have changed since the vote in 2018. “One of them is that the government now has a majority in the senate,” he said. “And the second most important thing is that the current president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, is behind the bill, because legal abortion was an election promise.”
While activists are optimistic, Malamud said it would be impossible until the last minute to predict the outcome.
‘Although the government holds the majority vote, some of its senators are likely to vote against the bill. The outcome will then depend on the minority pro-abortion within the opposition bloc, which is delaying announcing how they will vote just to deny the government the political success of abortion for as long as possible. ”