Argentina’s Lower House will on Wednesday vote on a bill to decriminalise elective abortion without judicial authorisation in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.
The imminency of a bill that would make Argentina the first major Latin American country to effectively legalise abortion has sparked a wave of last minute tension among activists for and against the practice.
Observers believe, based on a current vote count, that the bill will not pass the Lower House.
Pro and anti-abortion activists have called their followers to Congress to accompany the vote on Wednesday afternoon.
A number of leading political and cultural figures have spoken out on the bill in the last few days, while a handful of public schools have been “occupied” by students wishing to express their support for abortion.
National Education Minister Alejandro Finocchiaro weighed in on that issue Monday, saying: “There is no reason that justifies, in times of democracy, that an educational facility be 'occupied' this way”.
“It is not good that students occupy 10 colleges but it is [good] that more and more people think that this is not the right path” for students to express their beliefs, he told Radio Mitre.
“Yesterday there were 20 meetings and half of the colleges were occupied. In previous years, we would have seen between 70 and 80 schools occupied”, he added.
-TIMES
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