Doctor Miranda Ruiz went to work one Friday in September knowing she was likely to be arrested.
The prosecutor of Tartagal, a city in Argentina’s province of Salta, had announced his intentions the day before: that Ruiz, 34, would be stopped for administering an abortion – in a country that had legalized the procedure less than a year earlier.
“I couldn’t believe it, it was very surreal,” Ruiz said. “It’s crazy to jail a doctor who performed a legal abortion when there is a national law that permits it.”
Ruiz had been working in a drop-in clinic in Tartagal when a 21-year-old came in. A team of doctors assessed the woman, who was 22 weeks pregnant, and determined she met the criteria for a late-stage abortion – her health was at risk. Ruiz prescribed misoprostol, a drug that induces miscarriage, and admitted the woman.. Days later the woman’s family filed a criminal complaint.
Ruiz was released a few hours after her arrest, but the charges against her have since been broadened to include providing an abortion without consent – something she denies.
“The person puts pills under her tongue for half an hour, and then swallows. That procedure is repeated every three hours. No one can force someone to abort in those circumstances,” says Ruiz, one of just a handful of doctors to provide abortions in Tartagal.
In December 2020, Argentina legalized all abortion up to 14 weeks, and in later stages of pregnancy if life or health is at risk, or in rape cases.
It was a victory for reproductive rights campaigners. But feminists, human rights groups and government officials say Ruiz’s case is an example of the battles still being waged in Argentina. The minister of women, gender and diversity, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, has called the charges an attempt to “discipline” doctors who are guaranteeing a right.
The national Secretariat on Human Rights Office says: “It is extremely problematic for the rule of law that those who comply with current regulations are criminalized, simply because some people do not agree with those regulations.”
In the first year since abortion was legalized, 64,164 terminations were recorded. The number of health centers that provided abortions increased from 907 to 1,347.
In the province of Buenos Aires, home to a third of the population, the number of municipalities offering abortions jumped from 38% to 96%, according to government data.
“The symbolic effect of the law has been strong, at least in our province,” says Soledad Deza, a renowned feminist lawyer, who heads the Tucumán-based organization Women x Women (Women for Women). Tucumán, a very conservative province, saw the number of official abortions jump from about 600 a year to more than 4,000 after legalisation. “The barriers have dramatically gone down,” says Deza.
But other provinces have recorded far fewer abortions, and the national government has had to defend the legislation. At least 37 legal challenges have been mounted since the law passed; 26 have been thrown out, four were archived and seven are awaiting judgment.
“The first barrier is information,” says Patricia Cuomo, of the feminist organization La Hoguera in Tierra del Fuego. “There isn’t a single public institution in any city here that has signage or graphic information explaining how to access an abortion.”
In Rio Grande, the province’s largest city, a helpline that tries to dissuade women from having an abortion is promoted in the public hospital. All the hospital’s doctors have declared themselves conscientious objectors, notes Cuomo. The law allows individual doctors to opt out on moral grounds but the institution has to ensure access to an abortion. Women are often sent to another city for late-stage abortions, in this case the provincial capital, Ushuaia, 220km away.
Gabriela Chavez, a nurse in Resistencia, the capital of the northern province Chaco, says there is a fear among health professionals of a backlash to providing abortions but things are changing. “A few years ago, you’d walk down the halls of the hospital and people might say, there goes that abortion – but now it’s something that is much more accepted,” she says.
But Deza says anti-abortion campaigners are now targeting later-stage pregnancies, which has potential implications for younger women. Argentina have a high rate of teenage pregnancy which are often the result of abuse and disclosed late.
In Ruiz’s case, a local politician publicized the case through social media. Ruiz said misinformation spread widely, including the claim that the fetus cried.
Ruiz is fighting to have her charges thrown out by the court. In the meantime, she continues to see women seeking abortions at the clinic. There’s an uptick in demand since her arrest of her. “All of this had the unexpected effect of strengthening the attention we give to [abortion],” she says.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism