The United Nations (UN) values the treatment of the Project on Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy in Argentina. He also urged the government “to take all necessary steps to achieve its approval in the Congress of the Nation.” This was communicated by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Dubravka Iimonovic, in a letter sent to the Argentine representative to the UN in Geneva, Federico Villegas.
He recalled that after his visit to the country in 2016, he noted that “the criminalization of abortion, coupled with the fact that medical personnel requested judicial authorization when performing pregnancy interruptions even when they were to be performed within the grounds provided for in the Penal Code, made abortion an inaccessible practice even in the exceptional cases contemplated by law”. The Special Rapporteur assured that she then recommended “that punitive measures be abolished that penalize women who have abortions and a law was passed regulating legal abortions, at least with regard to pregnancies resulting from rape or incest, in which the life or health of the pregnant woman is at risk, and where there is a serious foetal deficiency”. He also recalled that he suggested “that supporting requirements be established to avoid the general invocation of the conscientivity objection by physicians who refuse to perform abortions.” It is in this context that Iimonovic concluded the development of these bills that “expressly fall within the international law of human rights and seek to support women in their reproductive decisions”.
In this note:
