After the Supreme Court of the United States annul the historic ruling that legalized the right to abortion throughout the country in 1973, the debate around the rights of women and pregnant people was reinstated throughout the world, specifically by the conservative and right-wing movements. In our country, Nicholas Massotformer president of the PRO bloc in the Chamber of Deputies, is one of those who intends to raise that flag, by assuring that “the abortion discussion was not settled in Argentina”.
In radio statements, the former legislator of Together for Change and current director of Banco Ciudad was consulted about the measure taken by the highest US court and agreed with the ruling “in general terms” and stated that in Argentina Law 27,610 should be “reviewed”, that ensures Voluntary and Legal Interruption throughout the territory, approved by the end of 2020.
Likewise, Massot recalled that he voted against the project in Congress and that he would oppose it again if it were discussed again in Argentina: “For me it is a discussion that was not settled because it continues to divide society and it is a discussion directly associated with the weighting of rights, not as the majority says,” he launched in Futurock.
In this sense, he argued that those who voted against the voluntary interruption of pregnancy have a common pattern that “is the weighting of the right to life over the right to self-determination”. And this, as he explained, “is not to deny a right but to understand which one is worth more”.
Later, when asked if Congress should discuss the legal, safe and free abortion project again, he preferred not to answer the question directly and only stated that his position did not change and that “He is still against abortion because it takes away one more right than it allocates.”
Labour reform
However, abortion was not the only right against which the PRO referent pointed out. Also, he was in favor of labor flexibility: “It is necessary to make a labor reform. It is possible to advance with the ART that we started in 2017. SMEs do not hire more because they fear labor lawsuits.”
“To get out of this well, employment is needed. There is a cultural challenge, there are sectors that believe that the state has direct responsibility for job creation, it is not like that,” he added and maintained that “They just have to create conditions so that employment is generated by the private sector.”
And, finally, he closed: “The debate on turning social plans into unemployment insurance seems reasonable to me, which would be charged for a while until you get a new job.”
An anti-rights with history
Years ago Massot insists on eliminating rights and, prior to the approval of the Legal, Safe and Free Abortion project, in December 2020, he had assured that “abortion is a failure and failures are fought, they are not legalized”.
“We must legislate to prevent abortions, not to give them free of charge, turning the State into a facilitator of many deaths,” emphasized in 2018 the deputywho on other occasions had defended that for the procedure “the consent of the father should be considered as a requirement” or, in the case of a clandestine abortion, apply a penalty to him as well.
“Official figures indicate that in 2016 there were 31 deaths of women due to induced abortions, out of a total of 171,000 female deaths. More women die from AIDS and Chagas disease than from abortion. You must not lie with the figures”, Massot maintained in her argument, but did not take into account the statistics of the Ministry of Health that indicated an average of half a million abortions performed per year.
In addition, it gave erroneous data on death due to interruption of pregnancy: according to data from this same portfolio, there were 43 of 245 maternal deaths during 2016.
As an alternative, proposed “advancing in the possibility of reducing the penalties to women who, in a situation of vulnerability or due to pressure from their partner, had to have an abortion” and increase the sentences for “practitioners, accomplices and instigators of an abortion.”
A step back in US history
On Friday, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the sentence “Roe v. Wade” from 1973 that for almost half a century guaranteed women’s right to abortion in the country and left the power of its application in the hands of each state.
The decision was repudiated by the international community and President Joe Biden himself spoke out against it.. Meanwhile, several States, through their governors, guaranteed to maintain this practice within the legal framework.