Argentina to Drop Abortion Charges against Women

Argentina announced that it will drop criminal charges against women, accused of having abortions following the government’s historic decision to legalize the procedure, the Guardian reported on Sunday.

Campaigners believed that the announcement offers hope to the mostly poor and marginalized women facing criminal sanctions.

However, long-term problems such as obstetric violence and sexism in the justice system proves that the struggle for reproductive justice is not over yet.

The new law was passed on 30th December, allowing abortion for any reason during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, which makes Argentina the largest country in Latin America to broadly allow the procedure.

A woman called Belén, which is not her real name, spent nearly three years behind bars after suffering a miscarriage before a team headed up by feminist lawyer Soledad Deza managed to have her conviction overturned.

“Those almost three years that I was in prison were a very painful time for me, because it was horrible to be a prisoner for something I hadn’t done,” Belén said in a written statement.

Even when hospitals did not report patients to the police, women seeking treatment for abortion sometimes find themselves on the receiving end of cruel and degrading treatment.

Analía Ruggero stated that she went to a hospital on the outskirts of Buenos Aires at the age of 22 when she suffered complications from an abortion.

Doctors initially refused to treat her, but they also told her that if she goes elsewhere, she could get an infection and die.

Eventually, Ruggero was admitted but, as they worked, the medical staff whispered insults at her.

“The nurse was injecting me and saying under her breath, ‘You had an abortion! You’re trash, who do you think you are coming here?’,” she said.

“All those women who have been criminalised ... will have the benefit that their cases will be dismissed, because there’s a retroactive application of the most favourable criminal law,” Argentine minister for women, gender and persity, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta said.