The right to abortion in Argentina is at risk due to lack of distribution of supplies: This is María’s story

( Spanish) – Montecarlo is a small city in the province of Misiones, in Argentina, with just under 20,000 inhabitants. Those who walk through the neighborhoods may find cobblestone streets, but most of their paths are dirt. Anyone who wants to get from that town to Posadas, the provincial capital, has to drive about three hours.

María (who asked not to be identified by her real name so as not to be recognized in her city), says that in that place all the neighbors know each other. She has four children: the oldest is 13 years old, the youngest is barely past her first year of life. As she speaks, she holds her baby, whom she still breastfeeds, and says that for some time now all the tasks of caring for the home and her children have fallen on her: her husband lost his registered job in February of this year and had to move to a nearby town where he does field cleaning tasks.

In July of this year María noticed a delay in her period despite using contraceptive methods. The situation at home was not easy and supporting four children with a single salary from an unregistered job meant that his family was struggling to make ends meet. She says that having another child was not among her options. As soon as she suspected that she might be pregnant, she went to her primary gynecologist, a doctor from a private clinic who was the one who helped her give birth to her children.

“When I found out, I was desperate because my baby was one year old at the time. I already had complications in other births and after the last one, the doctor told me that it would be impossible for me to have another baby, that I would be at too much risk,” María explains to .

At the consultation, María asked about her options for accessing an abortion, but the doctor told her that he did not do those types of procedures and asked her to leave.

After that first negative response, María got an appointment at the local public hospital. There he also asked for help, but they did not know how to answer him about his alternatives. For this reason, he looked for a third option: he traveled to Eldorado, a city neighboring Monte Carlo, in whose public hospital there is a Family Planning sector. There, they sat her down with other patients and explained to them, all together, what the procedure for having an abortion was like. When some of the patients asked if the hospital was going to provide them with the medication, they were told that they did not have enough, that they would write a prescription for them to buy misoprostol privately.

“At that time I did not have 100,000 pesos (about 73 dollars, at the parallel exchange rate of July). My husband had lost his registered job, so I went to the public (hospital) to get free access,” she explains, and says that she tried to consult with the professionals at the public hospital in her area about misoprostol, but that they did not have the free medications either. . “When I asked, he replied: no, we don’t have any. I started crying, returning home, I was overcome with despair because my husband went away to work, I was left alone. It’s like the door was closed on me everywhere. And I came home crying with my baby in my arms,” says María.

contacted the Ministry of Health of the province of Misiones from where they confirmed: “This year we have had a significant shortage of the Nation’s National Sexual Health Program, regarding the basket of sexual health products, including misoprostol . The Province is working to reestablish the situation, and in the specific case of the consultation, the treatments are being sent to the Hospitals, to guarantee access.”

Since the beginning of its administration, the Government of Javier Milei paralyzed the purchase of essential supplies for access to abortion and did not deliver a single box of misoprostol, mifepristone, or cannulas for manual uterine aspiration, essential elements to guarantee access to abortion to pregnant people, according to a request for access to information presented by Amnesty International.

In Argentina the law of voluntary interruption of pregnancy governs since its promulgation in January 2021. According to the legislation, a person who wants to access an abortion has the right to have it performed safely and free of charge with the request as the only requirement up to and including the 14th week of gestation. However, exercising this right is increasingly difficult in the country, as confirmed by organizations dedicated to the supervision of reproductive rights in Argentina such as Amnesty International, the Latin American Justice and Gender team, and the Safe Abortion Access Network, among others. others.

According to the report presented in May by the National Directorate of Sexual and Reproductive Health of the Ministry of Health of the Nation, the distribution of medications and equipment for manual vacuum aspiration had not been carried out until that month due to lack of stock, and the guarantee of these inputs for the remaining months would depend on the progress of the public tender that, at the time of the official response, was in progress.

Amnesty International made a new request for information to follow up on this problem in September. Until today, the Government has not responded to this new request. reiterated the query and has not received a response either.

As a last option, María looked for alternatives on the internet. This is how he met Amnesty International, an organization that works for the promotion and defense of human rights. Through the form on her website, she told of the obstacles she encountered in accessing an abortion in her province, and a week later the professionals from the NGO contacted her and guided her to obtain the medications for free. assert your right to a legal, safe and free abortion.

María is one of the cases in which Amnesty International had to intervene in order to guarantee a safe abortion. The law explains that people who want to access this procedure must be guaranteed their right within a period of no more than ten days. Until Amnesty intervened and helped María, about a month passed.

According to organization dataso far in 2024, complaints about barriers in access to voluntary interruption of pregnancy through the claim form that can be accessed on its page, increased by 80% until the month of August compared to the previous year .

Lucila Galkin, director of Gender and Diversity at Amnesty International Argentina, warns in an interview with : “The official information is that until October there were not going to be supplies, but we know that the scenario is even worse. It is much more critical because the purchase of those inputs was not even opened, so it is most likely that there will not be any directly at all this year.”

The contrast with data from previous years is at least striking, explains Galkin. “While in 2023 almost 150,000 treatments of the combined misoprostol and mifepristone were guaranteed or distributed throughout the national territory, so far this year the provinces of the country have not received stock and we have also been confirming this with requests for access to information public that we are doing in different provinces,” he explained.

In the same sense is the information they receive from health professionals from the Safe Abortion Access Network (RedAAS). One of its directors, Silvina Ramos, explains to that the lack of distribution of these medications adds to the “lack of condoms, oral contraceptives, implants, let’s say, the complete basket of supplies for sexual and reproductive health.”

Galkin, from Amnesty, highlighted that the provinces not only comment on the lack of access to supplies for access to legal voluntary interruption of pregnancy, but that contraceptive methods are also lacking. “So there is a lot of concern about the impact that this is going to have on family planning,” he remarked.

contacted the Ministry of Health of the Nation inquiring about both shortages and the second request for public information and received no response.

As explained by Amnesty International and RedAAS, provincial governments are looking for alternatives to fill the hole left by the Nation in terms of reproductive health.

“Some provinces have gone out to make direct purchases immediately, because otherwise in practice they end up violating the rights of women and pregnant people,” explains Galkin.

Ramos says the same thing: “The provinces are buying in quantities that probably do not supply all of the demand, but there is a willingness on the part of some provinces to assume the purchase of inputs.”

The problem of leaving it in the hands of each province, both specialists explain, is that this deepens inequalities in the different regions of the country, since not all regions have the same resources.

Ramos assures that the impact that this withdrawal of the National State will have on public health policies can be twofold: “Women who end up not accessing abortion and who probably resort to unsafe abortions or continue a forced pregnancy. “Those are the options that a woman has who wants to have an abortion and cannot get the procedure.”

And Galkin concludes: “It has been demonstrated, in two years of implementation, how it has contributed to lowering, for example, the maternal mortality rate due to abortion by 53% from 2020 to 2022. The legal voluntary interruption of pregnancy is a benefit more health that must be included in the mandatory medical program and that must be available to the population, because it is a matter of public health.”