IJFAB Blog

Argentina’s Congress has legalised abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy, with the Senate approving the measure by a vote of 38-29. Prior to the vote, abortion was only allowed in the case of rape or a threat to the mother’s health. This is a ground-breaking legislation as Latin America has some of the world’s strictest termination laws, due at least partially to the strong influence of the Catholic Church in the region. The bill was supported by centre-left President Alberto Fernández.

According to the BBC, pro-choice activists hope the legalization of abortion in Argentina, which is one of the largest and most influential countries in the region, will inspire other Latin American countries to follow suit. Currently, abortions are completely banned in El Salvador, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic and are only allowed in restricted circumstances in most other Latin American nations. Only Uruguay, Cuba, Guyana and parts of Mexico currently allow women to the option of elective abortion.

According to the BBC,

President Fernández had made reintroducing it one of his campaign promises. “I’m Catholic but I have to legislate for everyone,” he argued.

The president also said providing free and legal abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy was a matter of public health as “every year around 38,000 women” are taken to hospital due to clandestine terminations and that “since the restoration of democracy [in 1983] more than 3,000 have died”.

Vilma Ibarra, who drafted the law, was overcome with emotion as she spoke to reporters after it passed. “Never again will there be a woman killed in a clandestine abortion,” she said, crying.

While abortion continues to be one of the most contentious bioethical issues worldwide, there is wide support among bioethicists that the foundational principle of autonomy, which allows each person to choose and refuse medical treatment and decide what happens to their own body, provides support for the permissibility and legality of abortion.

Argentina’s current law makes abortion legal only in cases of rape or threat to the life of the pregnant person. As in many countries where abortion is illegal, abortions nonetheless happen, but less safely. Argentine feminists and feminist bioethicists have been arguing for legalization of abortion for decades.

On Friday, Argentina’s lower house passed legislation legalizing abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. This Editor is unsure of how many abortions in Argentina happen during that time period, but in the US almost 90% of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy.

So this while 14 weeks is short compared with the US’s “until viability” criterion (which means 22-24 weeks depending on the state, and rarely as low as 20), it will radically increase access to safe, legal abortion for Argentines.

Editor’s Note: This post comes to us from Guest Contributors Carina Fourie and Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra. Agomini has previously contributed work for IJFAB Blog on pregnancy as a superhuman feat. Prof. Fourie holds the Benjamin Rabinowitz Chair in Medical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington. Prof. Ganguli-Mitra is Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow in Bioethics and Global Health Ethics, as well as co-Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine, Life Science, and the Law at the University of Edinburgh. This entry was written in late summer 2020; ironically, posting was delayed due to the disproportionate effects of COVID and COVID responses on the Editors of IJFAB Blog, both carrying increased personal and professional responsibilities.

An internet search of ‘gender inequality COVID-19’ can produce what seem to be contradictory results, even within the confines of a single newspaper’s articles. Take The Guardian: “Coronavirus hits men harder” from April 7 and “Coronavirus pandemic exacerbates inequalities for women” from April 11. Similarly, one of us emphasized in an interview, that the effects of the pandemic are more or less severe according to a person’s position in society, including their socio-economic status, or their gender. Due to women’s often subordinate and disadvantaged social positions, the pandemic is hitting them particularly hard. The first comment on the interview raised doubt about these claims, citing for example, the higher mortality rates for men from Covid-19. What are we to make of this? Are men or women worse off in the current pandemic?

An exploration of these questions helps to underline the problem with defining the moral aims of public health planning for pandemics as the protection and promotion of health exclusively, or the reduction of health disparities, or both – at least where ill-health is measured as the morbidity and mortality associated with the pandemic disease. Pandemic planning must take account of the effect of pandemics and responses to them on existing social injustices, and on how health can be affected both by the disease itself as well as by responses to the pandemic.[1]   

According to the BBC, 10 members of the indigenous Greater Andamanese tribe in India have tested positive for coronavirus in the past month. The Greater Andamanese only have 53 remaining members.

The Andamans Islands are home to a total of five Indigenous tribes: the Jarawas, North Sentinelese, Great Andamanese, Onge and Shompen, and local health officials say a main priority is keeping the coronavirus from spreading to other vulnerable tribes.

For centuries, Indigenous people across the globe have suffered and died from communicable diseases spread by colonizers and other world travelers. Indigenous people are vulnerable to disease due both to lack of immunity and because of adverse social conditions imposed upon them by Western colonizers.

In the Americas, coronavirus has also spread through indigenous communities, notably in tribes living along the Amazon as well as in the Navajo Nation. The centuries of violence these groups have suffered have resulted in increased malnutrition, illness, and trauma that make them more susceptible to contracting and dying from covid-19.

As coronavirus pandemic continues, we must collectively reckon with the historical and ongoing mistreatment of tribal Indigenous people worldwide.

It is perhaps well known that of the 27 members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, only two of them are women. A recent report from NPR shows that this is not a problem unique to the United States. Only 10 of the 31 members and advisers of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee on COVID-19 are women. The WHO-China joint mission on COVID-19 is comprised of only 20% women.

While men are more likely to die of coronavirus, women are at higher risk in other ways. Women make up 70% of the world’s healthcare workforce, putting them at higher risk of infection.

Countries are reporting higher numbers of reports of domestic violence as stay-at-home orders have confined women to tight quarters with abusive family members. And widespread shutdowns have disrupted women’s access to maternal health services. A study in The Lancet estimates, in its worst-case scenario, that nearly 60,000 additional women could die of maternal health complications over a six-month time period as a result of COVID-19.

With these facts in mind, it is morally imperative that women be equally represented in task forces shaping global and local policies with respect to the virus.