Blogs
Featured Image
Pro-life protest in ArgentinaRuptly / YouTube

December 9, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — On Thursday, Argentina’s lower house of congress will vote on an abortion legalization bill sponsored by President Alberto Fernández, who holds a majority in the lower house. Despite a massive pro-life pushback in 2018 that defeated similar legislation, the government is hopeful that the senate will vote the bill into law next week. The new law would allow abortion up until fourteen weeks of pregnancy and beyond that point in cases of rape (abortion in those cases is already legal in Argentina.) This is the ninth attempt to legalize abortion in one of Latin America’s largest countries.

The pro-life movement, which launched the “Blue Wave” across the continent in 2018 in response to the symbolic green of the pro-abortion crowd, has been pushing back relentlessly for two years. Camila Duro, a 26-year-old pro-life leader who works for Frente Joven, an organization which “seeks to reduce maternal and infant mortality by addressing its main causes, providing support to women with pregnancies at risk and their children,” told me that it has been a stressful time. Pro-lifers are meeting with pro-life congressmen in order to persuade the undecided politicians to abstain from voting.

“Simultaneously, we [organized] a federal march for life last week with over 1.5 million people in the streets and tomorrow we’ll surround the congress with our cars while abortion is going to be [debated],” Duro noted.

The pandemic has actually assisted the pro-life movement, as many Argentines believe it is unseemly for the government to be attempting to push through abortion legalization while badly mismanaging a pandemic and grappling with a poverty rate of close to 45%.

José Carmuega, a pro-life journalist, told me that the pro-life movement is feeling relatively calm that this attempt to legalize abortion will fail. “They have a good chance of passing the half-sanction of the chamber of deputies, but they have [no] chance of passing the chamber of senators,” he said. “We are very attentive to accompany the pro-life senators so that they can vote calmly without being hit by the worst of politics.”

“The polls say that 60% of Argentines do not approve of abortion,” according to Giaccobe y Asociaciados and others, he told me. “The Catholic Church, the Evangelical and civil organizations are united to stop the law, and … the pro-life community will continue to grow on a continental level.”

He encouraged to follow Unidad Provida on Twitter and Instagram.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media have been throwing their weight behind the abortion activists, emphasizing the ongoing effort to “paint Argentina green” in the lead-up to the vote while ignoring the pro-life response. In 2018, the Women’s March with less than half a million participants was given wide coverage, while the pro-life marches of more than four million people were almost entirely ignored. To read The Guardian and other mainstream outlets is to get the distinct impression that abortion legalization is inevitable and that the pro-life movement is insignificant.

This is not reporting the facts, it is an attempt to shape the facts on the ground. Hopefully, the pro-life movement and Argentina will stun the world next week by rejecting abortion once again.

LifeSiteNews is facing increasing censorship. Click HERE to sign up to receive emails when we add to our video library.

Featured Image

Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.