Abortion: The law may take effect next week

The promulgation of the legalization of abortion and its entry into force will occur, at most, towards the end of next week, according to official sources. THE NATION. “It will be very soon,” they said. The decriminalization bill sanctioned in the Senate last week was already sent by Congress to the Executive Branch, and now it remains for the President to sign a decree to promulgate the law, with the partial veto in two articles.

Strengthen existing protocols, guides that facilitate work in each of the provinces, and coordinate the provision of supplies and medicines. These are the main challenges so that once the law of voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVE) regulations and their application throughout the country come into force instantly.

The Executive Power promised to eliminate the word “integral” when promulgating the law in the Official Gazette, making use of its power to partially veto a norm sanctioned by Congress, as part of the negotiation to obtain the endorsement of the project in the vote .

The maximum term for the Executive Branch is 10 business days, and the regulatory work is delegated to the portfolios conducted by Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta (Women, Equality, Gender and Diversity), Ginés González García (Health), who work with Vilma Ibarra (Legal and Technical Secretariat), the legal pen of the project. Ibarra met with the President hours after the vote in the Senate, sources from the Casa Rosada told this medium. And the Ministry of Health has already made a purchase to provide the provinces with misoprostol and comply with the law. Dialogue with the provinces to coordinate the application of the law is permanent.

The application in the provinces

The provinces in which there are networks of professionals of the public health system that attend the ILE (legal interruptions of pregnancy), that have provision of misoprostol and that have protocols for compatible ILEs or according to the protocol of the Nation will have greater ease in implementing the law, as indicated in the ministry led by Gómez Alcorta.

There are five provinces that, despite the requirement of the Supreme Court in 2012 through the FAL ruling, still do not have an ILE protocol to perform an abortion when there is a danger to the health and / or life of the pregnant person, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape. They are Santiago del Estero, Formosa, Corrientes, Tucumán and San Juan.

The government of Córdoba awaits first promulgation and then regulation to define the details of implementation at the local level. The president of the Association of Clinics, Sanatoriums and Private Hospitals of that province, Juan Grass, said that, in the absence of a legal impediment – due to the judicialization with which heavenly references threaten – the rule will be met without major inconvenience.

Regarding the possibility of conscientious objection by doctors, he stated that women should be referred to another institution, but indicated that we must wait for the regulations so that there is more clarity on the procedure.

The IVE law does not establish an institutional conscientious objection, but it does contemplate the possibility that physicians who have direct care may be conscientious objectors. And article 11 states that, in the event that an institution or private establishment or social work has all its physicians as conscientious objectors, a referral must be made to an effector who is not a conscientious objector.

Different is the situation in Mendoza, which is already beginning to prepare to launch the IVE. As the nation learned, tasks will be coordinated with the professional staff willing to carry out the practice, taking into account conscientious objection, at the same time that there will be no specific conditioning of the facilities, since the practices will be carried out in primary care, practically with the existing structure, both in public and private health centers.

With reports from collaborators