Between 460,000 and 600,000 women chose to undergo clandestine abortions, almost one for every child born. This is the Argentina of the Catholic Church, of de Verbo Incarnato, of a male chauvinist society and of narrow mindedness. In a country where abortion is illegal except for in two extreme cases, women who do not want a child resort to secrecy, and one in eight end up in hospital due to complications. However, a draft law has just emerged on the MP’s agenda which could make a difference. If the ecclesiastical authorities will allow it.

Scientific proof. For the first time, it’s not the usual NGOs, who have tried for years and always been ignored, who have announced an emergency situation, but instead an official scientific study. It was requested by the National Committee for Sanitary Investigation Programmes at the Ministry of Health, which spoke to a team of experts who used two tested methods at an international level.

“It’s an important step forward. Now we have scientifically proven figures, it’s no longer an unsupported claim”, comments Dr. Zulema Palma, working on the National Campaign for legal, safe and free abortion, launched by 230 NGOs who developed this draft law currently open in Parliament.

Methods. It has not been easy to gather information when investigating a clandestine practice which is punishable by the penal code. “We used indirect methods and gave in to the demand to reach an exact figure”, explained Silvia Mario from the Gino Germani Institution, one of the research groups. “However we have used the best methodology in the world”.

The study was based on two different methods. The first involved analysing hospital records to count the number of women reduced to admitting themselves to hospital due to post-abortion complications. Given that these cases represent only a small number of the total abortions carried out, we move to stage two: an investigation based on key witnesses, mainly gynaecologists and obstetricians from the public and private sector in and around Buenos Aires, Rosario, Mendoza, Cordoba, Tucuman and Resistancia. Humanitarian workers defending women’s rights and district leaders from the Salud Reproductive Programmes were also involved. They were thus able to estimate the number of abortions carried out in secret, including those which do not result in complications requiring hospitalisation. The final result for this was one in seven. The second method, based on unexplainable statistical methods, gave results which crossed over to reach an exceptional figure which shocked the nation.

How do they abort? The investigation established that middle and upper class women nearly always turned to medical staff who would do it at a huge price. Obviously it’s a very different story for poor women, reduced to putting themselves in the hands of inexperienced people or instead trusting ‘DIY’ methods. Ingesting a particular drug (which one can buy on prescription because it has other therapeutic uses) or inserting pills directly into the vagina, are the most popular methods. Therefore it goes without saying that among these girls, the percentage of hospitalisations rises excessively.

Hope for change. The draft law, the result of the awareness campaign pushed forward for years by many humanitarian and civil society organisations, was presented to the Health Committee in Parliament by socialist MP Silvia Augsburger and by Juliana Marino from Frente para la Victoria-Capital. The parliamentary procedure foresees that it will be subject to the Penal Legislation Committee before being dealt with and discussed by Congress. At the moment MPs said to be in favour come from Frente para la Victoria, the Radicals and ARI - Alternativa por una Republica de Iguales. The proposal is to guarantee women the right to abort in non-prosecutable cases and to stipulate the procedure which hospitals must follow when practising abortion. The final hope for NGOs is that if it becomes a reality cases like that in Santa Fe, where a 20-year-old girl with cancer died because the law refused her radiation therapy due to the unborn foetus inside her, can be avoided.

The reaction from the Roman Church. “The right to kill one’s children does not exist”, thundered the Argentine Episcopal Conference in a report containing the signatures of its President, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, and Vice Presidents Luis Villalba and Augustin Radrizzani. The bishops rushed to “defend the Constitution” and called “on each and every citizen to unite in defending life”. The Episcopate explained, “No right exists in our legislation which authorises governments and district or city councils to legislate such matters. There is no administrative or legal act according to which one can be excluded from judicial control in a case where the right to life is put at risk”. The National Secretary for the Family declared, “Abortion is always a crime, even if in some cases it is not prosecutable, it does not stop it from being so”.