Argentina’s Abortion Laws

Amnesty: Argentina is a "test" for eroding abortion rights

Argentina is being used as a "test site" for an international erosion of abortion rights, Amnesty warns according to The Guardian.

Abortion was legalized in the country in 2020 but since President Javier Milei took office in 2023, funding for reproductive health care has been reduced. Abortion pills were previously free in public health care, but this has now been restricted.

Amnesty warns that the "regressive" health policy pursued by the Argentine government is linked to Project 25, the ultra-conservative political plan developed by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.

- It is part of a global backlash aimed at dismantling hard-won progress that women have achieved. This is also happening under Donald Trump's leadership in the United States and in countries such as Hungary, says Mariela Belski, director of Amnesty International in Argentina. 

Gynecologist: “Women are afraid of going to jail”

Gynecologist Adriana Alvarez, who works at a public hospital in the conservative province of Tucumán in northwestern Argentina, describes how women’s rights are going backwards after the government’s restrictions on abortion rights in the country.

Abortion was legalized in the country in 2020, but since President Javier Milei took office in 2023, funding for reproductive health care has been reduced.

“We are now seeing, just as we did many years ago, unsafe abortions. They are happening in secret,” she says.

She describes how women come to the hospital with “fear in their eyes” and ask if they can have an abortion.

“They are afraid of going to jail,” Alvarez says.

Health care providers in the area say they are witnessing an increase in unsafe abortions due to delays in deliveries of abortion pills and misinformation.