Leading figures from the right-wing La Libertad Avanza (LLA) and PRO parties last week participated in a conservative forum at the Buenos Aires City Legislature to promote policies aimed at boosting the birth rate, criticise existing Integral Sex Education (ESI in its Spanish acronym) classes and push for a possible repeal of the Law for the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy.
The symposium – labelled “Freedom for the Future: a political agenda for the birth rate and the protection of children” – was held on July 23 and was organised by the Political Network for Values network, together with other organisations linked to the so-called “cultural battle” launched by President Javier Milei’s government.
Among those present were Buenos Aires City Deputy Mayor Clara Muzzio, Argentina’s former vice-president Gabriela Michetti, La Libertad Avanza Senator Carmen Álvarez Rivero (Córdoba) and national deputies Santiago Santurio and Joaquín Ojeda. Other officials from Jorge Macri’s City administration and provincial legislators also participated.
“Here are all the bills, with the maximum objective of overturning the abortion law,” affirmed Álvarez Rivero, a senator close to La Libertad Avanza Senate caucus leader Patricia Bullrich. Nevertheless, she maintained that an initiative of that type would need a prior social mobilisation to accompany the debate.
The senator revealed that there is an agenda for amending policies approved during the last two decades, while remarking that repeal of the abortion law did not only depend on Congress. “For that to happen, a society which works for it and asks for it is needed,” she pointed out.
Muzzio’s critiques of ESI and abortion
One of the main orators was City Deputy Mayor Clara Muzzio, who again questioned sex education in schools and linked the falling birth rate to cultural changes in recent years.
“Many of the couples who conceive a child, sacrifice it. One out of every three children is aborted,” claimed Muzzio during her presentation, figures she credited to unidentified obstetricians.
The official did not present any evidence for her claim.
She also alleged that “children are sexualised from kindergarten,” issuing a fresh critique of ESI.
The City deputy mayor further assured that the porteño citizenry prefers adopting dogs to having children. “The dogs double the children aged under 10” in the capital, she said in reference to the demographic changes in family structures registered in the district.
Buenos Aires City Human Development Minister Gabriel Mraida participated, albeit with a lower profile. He made the importance of strengthening family links the centre of his intervention.
Mraida’s presence reinforced the representation of Mayor Macri’s City Hall at the encounter, which critics said was not representative of residents in the capital.
Former vice-president Gabriela Michetti made her public reappearance at the conservative forum, assuring that those participating in the symposium were working for “the survival of the human race.” The veteran PRO party politician also claimed that she had been “cancelled” for expressing her opposition to the legalisation of abortion.
Meeting with Pablo Quirno
Speaking on behalf of Milei’s La Libertad Avanza party, Santiago Santurio questioned progressives and the “woke” lobby, which he accused of “normalising the pathological” and “making the pathological normal.”
The deputy, who is close to Milei’s top presidential advisor Santiago Caputo, is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Political Network for Values.
Another participant was former Cults & Worship secretary Nahuel Sotelo, today a Buenos Aires Province legislator for La Libertad Avanza, who criticised programmes of “hormonisation,” assuring that “gender ideology is a business” which needs to incorporate new “clients.” National deputy Joaquín Ojeda and fellow lawmaker Andrea Freguia spoke along similar lines.
The forum was co-organised by the Fundación Faro libertarian think tanks directed by Agustín Laje and by the Global Center for Human Rights.
A few days after the encounter, Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno received Lola Velarde, the executive director of the Political Network for Values, at the Foreign Ministry. Velarde maintains links with conservative European and Latin American groupings, among them Spain’s Vox and supporters of Brazil ex-president Jair Bolsonaro.
Quirno later vindicated a foreign policy based on “Western tradition” and “Judeo-Christian roots.”
“There exist truths about the human person not established by political power and which cannot be modified according to each period,” he expressed.
Although Presidente Milei has affirmed on different occasions that “abortion is homicide aggravated by association,” until now the government has not formally cleared a legislative debate to repeal the law approved in 2020.
The forum shows that the agenda against abortion and ESI continues to gain ground among leading libertarian and PRO figures, even when both sectors maintain political differences and are negotiating a possible electoral agreement.
– TIMES/PERFIL
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