The movie “Belén”, Argentina’s submission for the 2026 Oscars, tells the story of a 26-year-old woman who suffered a miscarriage in a hospital in Tucuman province in 2014 and was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2016 after being convicted of procuring an illegal abortion. 

Her case sparked a nationwide campaign to decriminalize abortion, known as the Green Tide after the green scarves protestors wore.

In December 2020, the Green Tide won: abortion was legalized on request up to 14 weeks, and later in cases of rape or risk to the woman’s physical or mental health.

Between 1985 and 2016, unsafe abortions caused 3,040 deaths –  29% of all maternal deaths – and more than 50,000 hospitalizations each year, according to the Argentinian Ministry of Health (MoH).

The rollout of the new policy was swift: from January 2021 to December 2024, Argentina’s public health system performed 314,500 legal abortions.

“Belen” is making waves in festivals. But in every interview, director Dolores Fonzi warns that this hard-won right is being eroded under President Javier Milei, elected in December 2023.

‘Murderous abortion agenda’

Milei combines radical economic libertarianism, aggressive austerity to reduce the state’s size and scope, and conservative, anti-feminist rhetoric.

At the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, Milei blasted “the bloody, murderous abortion agenda” that, he claimed, promotes population control to save the earth and has spurred falling fertility rates worldwide. He also condemned the  “sinister agenda of wokeism” and “LGBT ideology”.

Very quickly, his administration set out to dismantle reproductive rights programmes.

In February 2024, a representative from Milei’s party, Liberty Advances (LLA, from its Spanish acronym), introduced a bill to repeal the 2020 abortion law. It re-criminalized abortion for both the practitioner and the pregnant woman, with no exception for rape. 

Faced with public outrage, the Bill was quickly withdrawn. Abortion is not a priority for now, said Vice-President Victoria Villaruel, a conservative Catholic.

The government’s words and actions have created “an extremely complicated environment to access reproductive rights,” said Insist and Persist, a watchdog report in December 2024.

Budget cuts undermine access

Without repealing the law, however, the new administration has undermined reproductive health and rights programmes by throttling finances. The federal health budget has been slashed by 48% in real terms, and the provision of contraceptives and pregnancy tests to provinces was cut by 81%.

The safe abortion programme took a major hit. In 2024, the federal Ministry of Health (MoH) abruptly stopped distributing pregnancy tests, medicines and supplies for abortion care to the provinces, including 106,000 units of the medical abortion pills, misoprostol and mifepristone, scheduled for delivery.

Suddenly, each province, with varying levels of skills and budgets for procurement, had to buy its own supplies. The big discounts for pooled national procurement were lost.

By late 2024, half the provinces faced shortages of misoprostol, and nearly all had run out of mifepristone and combipacks of the two drugs that are used for medical abortions, according to Amnesty International in its 2025 report “It’s about you too: Defending access to abortion amid the rollback of public policies”.

The MoH also stopped releasing data about abortion, complications and procurement in 2024, and such information must be obtained through legal requests.

The MoH also froze training and technical assistance for safe abortion, a critical setback for provinces with many health workers who are conscientious objectors and too few trained providers. These measures deepened geographical and economic inequalities in access to reproductive health between rich and poor provinces.

Patients forced to pay

The MACA survey (Measuring Access and Quality of Abortion, 2023-2025, in six provinces) found that, although the procedure should be free, nearly half of users paid out of pocket, mainly for ultrasounds.

Complaints filed on Amnesty’s online form about barriers to access abortion nearly tripled in 2024, compared to 2023.

Users reported having to buy medicines and pay for ultrasounds. “Maria”, an informal worker with four children, was told to buy misoprostol for $73 – more than her monthly earnings. Finding a clinic with time slots and no costs took time, money and anxiety.

Delays occurred at every stage: consultations and medications were postponed (18%), waiting periods exceeded the 10 days allowed by law (62%), and in some cases, the procedures went beyond the legal 14-week limit. The MoH 0800 information line is not widely advertised and often goes unanswered. 

Alarmingly, private Centres for Vulnerable Maternities, which are not part of the MoH, have popped up in public hospitals to provide anti-abortion counselling.  Users reported misinformation about abortion effects, invasion of privacy, aggressive questioning, and harassment through unwanted follow-up calls.

For example, at the Centre in San Isidro Hospital in Buenos Aires, a woman said she was shown a doll, asked why she wanted “to kill her baby”, and asked how many sexual partners she had.

In many parts of the world, “crisis pregnancy centres” – usually funded by US organisations – have been set up to scare pregnant women seeking abortions, according to several exposés by openDemocracy.

Teen pregnancy plan dismantled

A crucial component in abortion reduction, the successful national plan to prevent unintended adolescent pregnancies (ENIA), was dismantled, its budget cut by 64% in 2024 compared to 2033, and 619 staff dismissed. 

Deliveries of supplies to high-priority provinces, from condoms to emergency contraception, dwindled, with long-acting subdermal contraceptive implants plunging from 76,000 in 2023 to barely 4,200 in 2024.

Active since 2017 in 12 of the country’s 23 provinces, ENIA helped cut teen pregnancy by nearly half between 2018 and 2022, especially among the poorest, least educated teenagers. ENIA prevented an estimated 94,000 unintended pregnancies, according to UNFPA.

On the positive side, Project Watch notes that provinces showed commitment to Law 27.610 by procuring essential medicines and supplying information. Mendoza province expanded access by allowing licensed midwives to provide voluntary abortion services.

Public support for reproductive health runs strong. A 2024 survey found that 70% of Argentinians agreed that the federal government should provide contraceptives and support the prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teen pregnancy.

Rising evangelical influence

But in October, Milei’s LLA won a key mid-term legislative election with nearly 41% of the vote (31% for the opposition, 32% abstention).  Among the LLA’s elected lawmakers are six evangelical Christians, chief among them new senator Nadia Marquez, a lawyer and pastor who has called abortion “the largest genocide in history”. Marquez campaigned against the law’s approval and has vowed to get it repealed.  About 15% of Argentinians are evangelicals.

In early November,  Milei and top Cabinet members hosted American preacher Franklin Graham at Casa Rosada, the seat of government. Graham, a key religious supporter of US President Donald Trump and long-term campaigner against abortion and same-sex relationships, hosted two well-supported rallies in Buenos Aires last month.

Although LLA would not have the votes required to repeal the law now, abortion care and rights are likely to face further restrictions.