First Lady Spurs Argentine Women Champions Reproductive Rights, Equality

Challenging South American custom, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton told Argentina’s leading women Thursday they should push for reproductive rights as a means to equality.

The first lady’s reference to abortion was fleeting, but its mere mention was exceptional in a country where 92 percent of the population is Catholic and most abortions are illegal.

In a provocative speech on women’s rights from the stage of South America’s most heralded opera house, Clinton called family planning a crucial ingredient needed to end discrimination and give women fair footing in society.

‘Access to quality health care, especially family planning and reproductive health services, is also crucial to advancing the progress of women,” the first lady said.

The audience responded enthusiastically, filling the ornate Teatro Colon with applause at the utterance of “reproductive health services.”

In her speech, Hillary Clinton lauded a family-planning program in neighboring Brazil, which she said provided men and women information to “enable them to make wise choices about planning their families.” The program combined reproductive health care, child immunization and training for new parents, she said.

The result, Clinton said, was that “rates of maternal mortality and, importantly, rates of abortion decreased because women received the health care they needed in a timely manner.”

While that was Clinton’s sole reference to abortion, her press secretary, Marsha Berry, said later there was no uncertainty about what she meant. Reproductive health services, she said, includes the right to choose an abortion.

Though the audience of several hundred women and a smattering of men cheered and whistled, a number of observers said they were shocked, not at what the first lady said about reproductive rights, but that she raised the issue at all.

“It became clear Hillary is a radical feminist, and we welcome that here,” said Liliana Tojo, a lawyer and a proponent of abortion rights. Speaking in Spanish, she appeared to have unwittingly latched onto a description of Clinton occasionally used by her detractors.

“I was surprised. It’s a very delicate issue. It’s against the position of the (Catholic) Church,” said Luz Etchemendiguaray, president of the University Women of Buenos Aires. Church officials seated next to her were taken aback, Etchemendiguaray said, though a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires had no comment when contacted later.

Clearly, the first lady caused a stir up through the five gilded balconies of the hall. As she concluded her remarks, white leaflets calling for abortion rights floated down from the upper tiers.

Abortion is legal only under strictly limited circumstances: if the woman was raped, if she’s mentally incapacitated or if her life is endangered.