Upon entering the Congress, a plaque reminds parliamentarians that the Virgin of Luján is the patron saint of Argentine political parties. In the country of Pope Francis, on the verge of voting to legalize abortion, the Church is exerting all its strength.
With half the sanction received by the Chamber of Deputies on December 11, The Senate must vote this law on Tuesday for the voluntary termination of pregnancy until the 14th week of gestation. The pros and cons are equal. Two years ago, a similar initiative failed because of the majority opposition of senators, amid an intense campaign by the Catholic and Evangelical Churches.
In recent days, both congregations have regained their pro-life bet with various rallies and marches across the country.
Mutual support
The Argentine constitution guarantees freedom of worship. A 1994 reform removed the requirement to belong to Catholicism in order to become President of the Republic. However, it maintained in its preamble the invocation to God, as well as the second article, which ensures the government’s support for the Catholic religion.
“The Catholic Church in Argentina has a great capillarity. There is a very strong Catholic culture in the political world, “sociologist Fortunato Mallimaci, author of The Myth of Secular Argentina, told AFP. Catholicism, politics and the state ”.
“Religious groups seek the support of the state and the state, when it feels weak, seeks support in religious groups. The weight of the Catholic Church today is more political than religious“, emphasizes Mallimaci.
The constitutional provision puts into practice that Argentine state pays a salary to bishops and subsidizes Catholic education, which covers 36% of education in the country, according to this specialist.
However, Mallimaci points out that since the return of democracy in 1983, Catholicism has lost its influence, while “the evangelical world is growing a lot.”
According to a 2019 survey on religious beliefs conducted by the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet), 62.9% of Argentines declare themselves Catholics, 18.9% without religion and 15.3% evangelicals.
In this last democratic period, the divorce was approved (1987). Then came a comprehensive law on sex education (2006), one for equal marriage (2010) and one for gender identity (2012).
The church and abortion
In Argentina, abortion has been allowed in cases of rape or risk to life for a woman since 1921, when the radical (Social Democrat) president Hipólito Yrigoyen ruled. If the current bill is approved, abortion will be free until the 14th week of gestation.
“There is a very strong opposition and rejection of the Catholic Church, which is playing hard” to prevent the approval of the law, constitutional lawyer Alfonso Santiago told AFP.
But if approved, this expert rules out a rupture in the dialogue between the Church and the center-left government of Alberto Fernández, a promoter of the law and who is proud of his good relationship with the pope, a former bishop of Buenos Aires.
“I don’t think there will be a break in collaboration on other issues. It hasn’t happened before, when equal marriage was approved,” Santiago said.
Although Pope Francis has repeatedly equated abortion with hiring a murdered man during this parliamentary debate in Argentina, he has remained silent for the time being.
“It is a law that does not oblige. The problem that arises for the Catholic Church if abortion is legalized is that it will remain in it, and not in the state, to make believers comply with a ban that will be only religious,” Mallimaci explained.
A 2020 Conicet survey found that 22.3% of Catholics in Argentina believe that women should have the right to abortion if they so decide, 55.7% believe that abortion should only be allowed in certain circumstances and 17.2% reject it in all cases.
Evangelical mobilization
Evangelical organizations have led massive demonstrations since 2018 by opponents of abortion legalization.
“They have the impulse of the reborn. Heavenly manifestations [contra el aborto, por el color del pañuelo con el que se identifican, Ndlr] they are led by them, the Catholics do not mobilize like that “, says Mallimaci.
Despite their steady growth, evangelical churches in Argentina “do not have the same political strength as in other countries, such as Brazil, where they have a parliamentary bloc,” says Santiago.
“It is a very dispersed structure, with a lot of diversity, but with a great capacity to mobilize its people,” he says.
The next opportunity to demonstrate will be on Tuesday, outside the Congress, where feminist activists with green scarves will gather, for a parliamentary day in which both sectors hold their breath and neither dares to anticipate a result.