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Argentina has become the first major Latin American country to legalise abortion after a lengthy campaign by women’s rights activists.
Abortion has previously only been allowed in Argentina if the pregnancy is due to rape or in instances when the mother’s health or life is in danger.
The Senate voted by 38 in favour to 29 against with one abstention to approve legislation after a drawn-out debate which started at 4pm on Tuesday.
Activists cheered and embraced each other outside the congress in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires’ when the verdict was announced in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
The new legislation, which allows women to have an abortion up to the 14th week of pregnancy, was passed by Argentina’s lower house earlier in the month.
Attempts to legalise abortion are strongly opposed by the Catholic Church in Argentina where pregnancy terminations are a highly divisive issue.
Alberto Fernández, the Argentinian president who introduced the bill legalising abortion, has said the new legislation would ultimately save lives, as more than 38,000 women are forced to go to hospital each year after illegal abortions go wrong and more than 3,000 have died since 1983.
A bill legalising abortion was rejected by a close margin by the predominantly Roman Catholic country’s senate after getting the approval of the congress back in 2018.
The latest legislation is the ninth bill in the past 15 years to tackle the nation’s highly restrictive abortion laws which feminist campaigners have been striving to overturn for over three decades.
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