BUENOS AIRES— Last Thursday was International Women's Day, and in this traditionally macho society, much was made out of a holiday that Americans would scarcely recognize. The city government posted billboards showing male and female pictograms with an equals-sign between them, a campaign was launched to promote equal distribution of household chores and editorial pages debated the presidential candidacy of Cristina Kirchner, the current first lady. In many respects, Argentina is a more gender equal society than the United States. It has already had a woman president (albeit not an elected one), and women hold over 30 percent of the seats in Congress. Still, there is one glaring issue that pops up in any discussion of Argentine women's equality: the absence of legalized abortion.
Americans who have grown up in the post-Roe generation have taken abortion rights for granted. American women — even those who would never consider having an abortion — know that they have the right to do so, should they so choose. Nevertheless, the United States is one of only three countries in the Western Hemisphere that have legalized abortion. (The other two are Canada and Cuba.)
In Argentina, abortion is technically legal only in cases of rape or endangerment of the woman's life. In practice, though, abortion is widely available for women with the means to pay. They can have a safe, sanitary abortion provided in a local clinic — for a considerable fee. The government turns a blind eye to this practice.
For women who cannot pay, the reality is far less pleasant. For them, an abortion involves a dangerous, back-alley procedure — a coat-hanger or the assistance of an ill-trained friend. There are over 500,000 abortions a year in Argentina, with more than one woman dying per day from an unsafe procedure.
The government of President Nestor Kirchner, from the center-left Judicialist Party, supports comprehensive family planning and sex education in schools. They have recently made birth-control pills available for free in all public hospitals. Still, the current administration does not have enough political power to overcome the opposition to abortion rights in a country where the Catholic Church still holds considerable clout.
In the few instances where legal abortions are available, judicial permission is required. A long-running story in Argentine newspapers is that of a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant after being raped by her stepfather. She applied for permission for a "therapeutic abortion" from the provincial courts and was sucked into a Kafkaesque judicial proceeding. The provincial Office of Child Welfare appointed an advocate for her fetus, while the girl's own lawyers argued on her behalf. Several different courts had to weigh the arguments on both sides. While a small 14-year-old could die in childbirth, this argument was given little consideration. Instead, the proceedings rested on whether it was just to force the girl to bear a child who would forever remain a reminder of her rape. The province argued that adoption would be a sufficient remedy for this problem. While it now looks as though the girl will have the abortion, it will come only after an arduous judicial process that no child should have to suffer — one inflicted by the Office of Child Welfare, no less. Though the girl's identity remains anonymous, her story has become a national discussion.
In the United States, we think that such things cannot happen here, or that if they could, it would only be in some hypothetical, post-Roe apocalypse. The truth is that we are not as far from Argentina as we'd like to believe when it comes to abortion rights. Thirty-four states require minors to get either parental consent or notification for an abortion. A judicial bypass option is available in all of these states. Such an Alice in Wonderland-esque trial is just as feasible for the girl in Florida who seeks an abortion as it is for the girl in Buenos Aires. Congress also forbids federal funding of abortions under Medicaid, as do 33 states. The result is that for many poor American women, abortion is no more available than it is for women in Argentina. And unlike President Kirchner, the Bush administration does not even support comprehensive sex education or publicly funded contraception.
Since decisions on abortion in the United States ultimately rest with the courts, the issue has become abstract and philosophical. The supporters of abortion rights have effectively ceded the political debate and concentrated their efforts on maintaining a pro-Roe Supreme Court majority. Antiabortion politicians bandy about platitudes like "the culture of life," but they know full well that they will never have to vote to ban abortion. Seeing the situation in Argentina firsthand would remind everyone of what's really at stake in the abortion debate — real women and real lives. Thomas Dollar is a junior in the Wilson School. He is currently studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina and may be reached at tdollar@princeton.edu.
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