Organizations demand explanations from the municipal authorities for access to abortion / the day
In the last 16 months, a total of 597 abortions were performed in the municipal Primary Health Care Centers (CAPS) in La Plata, as confirmed by community officials to EL DIA. This newspaper also made the corresponding inquiries to the Health area of the Province, in order to have the number of abortions performed in the Buenos Aires hospitals that are in the Region, but the data corresponding to La Plata was not provided, but rather the total count. of those that materialized throughout the Buenos Aires territory (more than 50 thousand).
Regarding the abortions performed in the aforementioned community centers, it is a number that, a priori, could indicate that the City is fully complying with the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Law (IVE), sanctioned a little more ago of two years, on December 30, 2020. But the truth is that in this matter the local Executive is on the ropes after a ruling by Judge María Fernanda Bisio.
The judicial decision arose in response to an appeal filed by feminist and human rights organizations, which came together due to the lack of information on the application of the IVE in the City. But in addition to this lack of data, what worried them the most was that in 2021 -the year in which the claims began- of the 47 Primary Health Care Centers distributed throughout the Region, only three guaranteed access to abortion. .
That is why “on November 3, 2021 we submitted a request for access to public information and on December 13 we sent a prompt dispatch through the front desk and by email to the Secretary of Health. After 30 days without a response, we understood that the Municipality was refusing to provide information, so we filed an amparo against the municipality on May 5, 2022,” explained María Julia Constant, a member of the Campaign for the right to abortion.
Finally, on August 31, 2022, the Municipality responded to the demand, but of the 15 questions that had been asked, only 9 were answered, avoiding giving information on how many procedures had been carried out so far or which were the centers in which compliance with the the correct application of the IVE. Therefore, Judge María Fernanda Bisio, of the Contentious Administrative Court No. 1 of La Plata, upheld the organizations’ claim and on November 22 gave the Municipality a period of 30 business days to make a report of ” complete, truthful and adequate manner” in which a “full and detailed response to all of the 15 questions raised” is given.
New councils
Since the first request made jointly by the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), Amnesty International, the Latin American Justice and Gender Team (ELA), the La Plata Campaign for the Right to Abortion, the Network of health for the right to decide in La Plata, Berisso and Ensenada, and Disobedient Lifeguards in La Plata, to date the Municipality has opened new ministries. In this way, today of the 47 existing health centers, only six guarantee access to the IVE for pregnant people and they are the following: No. 7 (Villa Elvira), No. 11 (Arturo Seguí), No. 15 (Tolosa), No. 41 (Altos de San Lorenzo), No. 44 (Los Hornos) and No. 45 (El Retiro).
Given this, members of the Network of Professionals for the Right to Decide confided to this medium that the new councils were formed in response to pressure from the organizations, but that they were done in a “very precarious way, with few workers, with enough persecution, with few turns of ultrasound scans and delays. They also added that it is “very difficult to open them because there is a lot of resistance” and in their understanding this is due to the fact that “the municipal authorities are conscientious objectors.”
a minority
In any case, despite the openings, the centers that have IVE counseling continue to be a minority and this low number has an impact on the fact that those who wish to have an abortion often go directly to provincial hospitals, when “80 percent of the IVE requests could be resolved in the CAPS, but that is not the case and that is why the hospitals are out of turn, they have a lot of demand ”, Constant analyzed.
For her part, Paula Carasatorre, director of Health Programs of the Municipality, acknowledged that “yes, obviously there should be more centers, but it is not easy to make the necessary circuit in the health centers, because they are not the same as the public hospitals where you have All services in one place.
Steps to follow
It is that in order to comply with “access to legal, free and safe voluntary termination of pregnancy, there are circuits that you have to guarantee. Before doing the treatment, a person must be asked for a laboratory, so for example if they went to Arturo Seguí center No. 11, they have to go to the municipal laboratory that is at 7 and 60 to have the study done. All this is from one day to the next and we have to think about the distances”, argued the official. The same happens with ultrasounds: not all centers have ultrasound machines, so they must also be referred. “All this implies that you have to follow a circuit to make it safe, it’s not nonsense, it’s not delivering the misoprostol and that’s it,” she said.
Although the relevant medication is only delivered in six centers, Carasatorre stated that the vast majority have reproductive and non-reproductive sexual health councils, since “the fundamental work of primary health care has to do precisely with the prevention and promotion of Comprehensive sexual health, we focus and emphasize that, so as not to have to carry out an IVE”.
Of the 47 existing health centers, only six guarantee access to the IVE for pregnant people
