Marta Alanis, President of Catholics for Choice wrote a thought-provoking article on women’s rights in Argentina. “Fighting for women’s lives in Argentina”, published in 2011 this article encapsulates in detail the reign of Catholic influences within the state government of Argentina. This article shares hard statistics on the number of illegal abortions that take place in Argentina despite the illegality of the practice. 30% of maternal deaths can be directly traced to unsafe abortion practices in Argentina. The author urges that despite Argentina being one of the wealthiest Latin American nations, without access to safe abortions women are dying. Abortions are only “legal” if, the mother’s life is in jeopardy or if the pregnancy was a result of rape. Despite there being exceptions for legal abortions, in many cases when petitions are made to obtain legal abortions the government denies them.
The Author does a great job in organizing her arguments within this article. She begins by boldly stating the wild abortions statistics of the region of Latin America and then zones into discussing Argentina. The Marta Alanis explains throughout the article that without changing the cultural stigma surrounding women’s rights in Argentina policies won’t change. Moreover, without separation between the Catholic church and the state government; there will be no change. The author tends to constantly aim towards focusing on how unsafe at home abortions are and the maternal death rate in the region due to strict abortion laws. Towards the end of the article, the author lists hefty statistics that cannot be ignored on abortion rights and casualties in Argentina. Understanding that this was written by a Catholic woman creates a conversation to be had whether or not all Catholics stand so aggressively against abortions.
This source is useful because it shares a first hand, a Catholic point of view on human reproductive rights in a Latin American state such as Argentina. This article allows us to address that women’s rights are human rights that shan’t be ignored. This article helps to unravel the complexity in separating church and state. There are culture and respect for the Catholic church within Latin American countries. This respect for the Catholic church makes it abundantly difficult to separate church and state.
Image: https://goo.gl/images/1K47zp
This image was found on Google and the title translates to, “My Body. My Decision”. I selected this image because it shows the rallied support women of all walks of life have for one another in their quest to obtain safe abortion practices in Argentina. The link from this image takes me to a site that shares the legal framework being worked on for women to obtain abortions safely within Argentina.