Argentina's Senate has legalised abortions in a historic move for the Catholic-majority region.

Senators voted 38-29 and one abstention. Abortion is now legal up to the 14th week of pregnancy. Until now, abortions were only permitted in cases of rape or for the sake of the mother's health.

Footage from Tuesday (December 29) shows abortion-rights activists wearing green scarves and protesters against the bill wearing light blue scarves in the vicinity of the Argentine Congress during the debate.

Elated pro-choice campaigners who had been keeping vigil outside Buenos Aires’s neoclassical congressional palace erupted in celebration as the result was announced in the early hours of Wednesday morning (December 30).

Footage from December 10 also shows celebrations after the approval of the project in the Chamber of Deputies after being put to congress by the country’s president Alberto Fernández.

“There is this hypocritical Argentina that denies abortion, just as it used to deny homosexuality,” Fernández said on the eve of this week’s vote, calling abortion a “public health problem” not a police matter.

SHOTLIST:

1. Various of protesters in favor (green scarves) and against abortion (light blue scarves) in the vicinity of the Argentine Congress during the debate in the Senate (12/29/2020)
2. Various of protesters in favor of abortion waiting for the vote in deputies during the night (10/12/2020)
3. Various of celebrations after the approval of the project in the Chamber of Deputies (10/12/2020)

STORYLINE:

Argentina has become the largest Latin American country to legalise abortion after its senate approved the historic law change by 38 votes in favour to 29 against, with one abstention.

Elated pro-choice campaigners who had been keeping vigil outside Buenos Aires’s neoclassical congressional palace erupted in celebration as the result was announced in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The bill, which legalises terminations in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, was approved by Argentina’s lower house earlier this month after being put to congress by the country’s president Alberto Fernández.

“There is this hypocritical Argentina that denies abortion, just as it used to deny homosexuality,” Fernández said on the eve of this week’s vote, calling abortion a “public health problem” not a police matter.

Fernández said that since the return of democracy in 1983 more than 3,000 women had died as a result of unsafe, underground abortions in Argentina.

The landmark decision means Argentina will become only the third South American country to permit elective abortions alongside Uruguay, which decriminalised the practice in 2012, and Guyana, where it has been legal since 1995.

The Caribbean island of Cuba legalised the practice in 1965 while Mexico City and the Mexican state of Oaxaca also allow terminations.

Giselle Carino, an Argentinian feminist activist, said she believed the achievement in the home country of Pope Francis would reverberate across a region that is home to powerful Catholic and evangelical churches and some of the harshest abortion laws in the world.

In most countries, such as Brazil, abortions are only permitted in extremely limited circumstances such as rape or risk to the mother’s life, while in some, such as the Dominican Republic and El Salvador, they are banned altogether.