Catholic Church leaders in Argentina are dismayed over the government's decision to distribute the morning-after pill for free in public hospitals, said a church official."We were surprised, and we regret the move," said Father Ruben Revello, coordinator of the Institute of Bioethics at the Catholic University of Argentina.
He said March 6 that he was taken aback by the decision because a legal complaint by a nongovernmental organization that the drug's packaging described it falsely as only having a contraceptive effect remained unresolved.
Father Revello said the church would continue to press its position that the morning-after pill "does have an abortive effect, and we are basing that on scientific studies."
Argentina's Clarin newspaper reported that the church was planning a counteroffensive with bishops speaking out individually and collectively, and that the issue could be raised at a March 21-22 bishops' meeting in Buenos Aires. No one at the Argentine bishops' conference was immediately available for comment.
Dr. Gines Gonzalez Garcia, the health minister, defended his decision to make the pill freely available. "The pill is not abortive. It is a method of contraception. And it's not me who says that -- scientists around the world do," he said.
"Those who say there should be no program of reproductive health say they are anti-abortion, but I think that in fact what they're doing is just making sure that the situation regarding abortion stays the way it is -- and that's a health calamity that we must fight," he said.
Women's health groups estimate there are around half a million illegal, and often unsafe, abortions every year in Argentina. The only legal abortions are in cases of the rape of a mentally disabled woman or if the mother's life is in danger.
The morning-after pill is already available in pharmacies for up to $7.70.
Gonzalez has said publicly that the government favors further decriminalization of abortion, but the government has stayed away for the issue and is likely to maintain that stance before presidential elections in October.
Abortion is only legal in restricted circumstances in most of Latin America.
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