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REPORTS: ARGENTINA |
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Advances
in Reproductive Health, Despite
Resistance
Viviana Alonso
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - Argentina's new
government supports recent advances
made in reproductive health, despite
the staunch opposition of
ultraconservative religious groups,
and of a judge who even attempted to
ban the production and sale of
contraceptives altogether.
As soon as he took office last month,
President Néstor Kirchner gave the
go-ahead to the implementation of the
National Programme on Sexual Health
and Responsible Procreation, and
approved the general policy on
reproductive health followed by Health
Minister Ginés González García, one
of the ministers kept on from the
previous cabinet.
The programme was created after the
October 2002 approval of a law on
Sexual Health and Responsible
Procreation, which was codified on May
26, the day after the centre-left
Kirchner took office.
But experts and activists with women's
rights organisations remain on the
alert due to the opposition mounted by
Catholic church groups, who do not
hesitate to use legal maneuvers in
their attempt to block legislative
advances on reproductive health.
The aim of the law on reproductive
health is to reduce maternal- infant
mortality, prevent unwanted
pregnancies, promote responsible
sexuality and teenage health, and
contribute to the prevention and early
detection of sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs).
But despite the government's political
will and the backing of doctors'
associations and social and women's
organisations, ''there is a strategy
of using the courts to oppose
enforcement of the law,'' the head of
the Forum for Reproductive Rights in
Argentina, Martha Rosenberg, told IPS.
The activist was referring to a ruling
handed down on May 22 by Judge
Cristina Garzón in the central
province of Cordoba, which banned the
manufacturing and sale of the pill and
intrauterine devices (IUDs) throughout
the country.
Garzón granted an injunction in
response to a lawsuit presented by the
March 25 Foundation, a conservative
group headed by Fernando Altamira, a
Catholic priest and lawyer who belongs
to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius
X.
The Fraternity was founded by late
French Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was
excommunicated in 1988 by Pope John
Paul II when he refused to accept the
reforms adopted by the Second Vatican
Council.
Garzón's ruling, which has been
appealed, ''is antiquated and classist,
because it aims to deprive the
country's most vulnerable women of one
of their rights,'' said Niza Solari
with the Women's Social and Political
Institute.
Minister González García said the
injunction granted by Garzón
''practically takes us back to the
days when people lived in caves.
''There are extremists of all kinds,
and this is nothing more than an act
of judicial terrorism. It's a social
bomb that we are going to defuse,''
she said.
The position taken by Altamira was
criticised by the archbishop of
Cordoba, who said through a spokesman
that the legal challenge presented by
the priest's March 25 Foundation was
''fundamentalist and hypocritical,''
because it was aimed at defending a
dogma, without taking into account the
impact on people.
In the midst of the controversy
unleashed by Garzón's verdict, the
health minister signed the first
agreement between Argentina and the
United Nations population fund (UNFPA),
to promote the new reproductive health
programme in the framework of the
recommendations handed down by the
1994 International Conference on
Population and Development in Cairo.
In the view of Nina Zamberlin, with
the Centre for Studies on the State
and Society (CEDES), ''the programme
generally benefits women who visit
public health centres, that is, women
from the lowest-income segments of
society.
''Once it is applied at a national
level, and specific budget allotments
are assigned, the provinces will have
the resources needed to guarantee
reproductive health services in an
ongoing manner,'' Zamberlin told IPS.
One of the goals of the new programme
is to reduce the number of abortions.
Abortion is illegal in Argentina, and
back alley abortions are one of the
country's most pressing public health
problems.
''Experts estimate the number of
abortions at between 335,000 and
400,000 a year,'' although others put
the figure higher, at ''450,000 to
500,000,'' according to CEDES.
Maternal mortality dropped in
Argentina in the 1990s, to 43 per
100,000 live births in 2001. However,
the national rate conceals enormous
differences from province to province.
In the northwestern province of Jujuy,
one of the country's poorest, maternal
mortality stands at 197 per 100,000
live births, four times the national
rate. In the provinces of Chaco and
Formosa in the northeast, maternal
mortality is three times the national
rate. In Buenos Aires, meanwhile, the
rate is just nine per 100,000 live
births.
Public Health Ministry statistics
indicate that 53 percent of maternal
mortality is due to direct obstetric
causes, 31 percent to complications
arising from abortions, and 16 percent
to indirect obstetric causes.
''Perhaps by providing more
information and greater access to
birth control, the damages caused by
clandestine and back alley abortions
can be reduced,'' said Solari.
Prior to the enactment of the law on
Sexual Health and Responsible
Procreation, less than half of
Argentina's provinces had reproductive
health programmes.
Although the parliament of the city of
Buenos Aires only passed a similar
statute in 2000, authorities in the
capital actually began implementing a
reproductive health programme through
the city's public hospitals in 1987.
Through that programme, ''information
on birth control and contraceptives
like the pill, condoms and IUDs'' are
provided, the head of the adolescence
section of the Rivadavia public
hospital, Eugenia Trumper, told IPS.
Rosenberg, Solari, Trumper and
Zamberlin all emphasised the
importance of carrying out public
awareness campaigns and of training
health personnel to work with the most
underprivileged sectors of society.
The national programme soon to go into
effect will be closely followed by
non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
like the Latin American and Caribbean
Committee for the Defence of Women's
Rights, the Foundation for Study and
Research on Women, the Forum for
Reproductive Rights, and the National
Network of Adolescents for Sexual and
Reproductive Health.
Close monitoring by the NGOs is
especially important given the
offensive of ultra-conservative
groups.
In 1998, Judge Garzón herself
attempted to prohibit emergency
contraception, also known as the
''day-after pill'', which has now been
incorporated into the national
programme and is one of the birth
control methods approved by the
National Administration of Medicines,
Food and Medical Technology.
Rosenberg argued that those who are
opposed to the reproductive health
programme are ''attacking an acquired
right that the law on Sexual Health
and Responsible Procreation merely
extends to those who are unable to
exercise it due to their
vulnerability, such as poor women and
adolescents outside of the school
system.
''It is a sinister campaign, lacking
in scientific foundations, waged by
fundamentalists who are incapable of
perceiving the real interests and
aspirations of the people they claim
to be 'guiding','' she said.
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