Facundo Iglesia 
Various organizations condemned the Buenos Aires City government’s decision to showcase a pro-life hotline in public hospitals, an initiative pushed last week by the City’s Social Council head Cynthia Hotton. The city announced that it would launch an advertising campaign for the hotline in public hospitals in the coming weeks.
The hotline itself, named 0800 VIDA (0800 LIFE), is spearheaded by the Red Nacional de Acompañamiento al Embarazo Inesperado (National Network in Support of Unexpected Pregnancies), a network of four hundred pro-life organizations, according to its website. The hotline, created in 2019, was mainly pushed by the Christian Alliance of Evangelical Churches of the Argentine Republic (ACIERA).
Hotton presented the initiative in a video with the City’s Health Minister Fernán Quirós, in which he said that the government is “guaranteeing rights.”
“I thought that it would be better to carry the burden of a child in my arms than having that weight on my conscience all my life,” one user that allegedly received advice on the hotline said, quoted by the network on its website.
Following the government’s controversial announcement, Evelyn Rodríguez, coordinator of the network, tweeted: “It’s not true that abortion is your only option! We are here to help you.”
After a years-long fight by the feminist movement, abortion was legalized in Argentina on December 30, 2020. That same day, the “1,000-Day Plan” law was also passed, which seeks to provide care during pregnancy and early childhood. According to Hotton, the “information provided” by the hotline would guarantee the implementation of the 1,000-Day Plan.
Amnesty International heavily questioned the initiative and filed an information request with the city government yesterday.
“It is worrisome that, despite the current regulatory framework, the Buenos Aires government considers delegating the execution of public policies designed to safeguard the right of health for women and pregnant persons and the rights of girls and boys in early childhood,” they said in their letter, which they provided to the Herald.
They also said that leaving the implementation of the 1,000-Day Plan to such organizations would mean that people would receive “partial and incomplete information that dismisses the right to end a pregnancy” which would be a “clear violation of their decision-making autonomy.”
The Campaña Nacional por el Derecho al Aborto (National Campaign for Abortion Rights) also chimed in. In a press release, they said that the decision “privatizes public policies, leaving them in the hands of organizations that clearly show their affiliation to religious beliefs that are activist against the right to abortion.”
Hotton, a well-known evangelist and pro-life advocate, said that her only wish is to provide information, and denounced that the women who operate the hotline phones are receiving “threats.”
This is not the first time the city mayor and Juntos por el Cambio presidential hopeful Horacio Rodríguez Larreta shows support for Hotton’s evangelical views. Last week, they both presented the “Social Agenda 2023” to one thousand evangelical pastors, where Larreta thanked them for “championing faith and family values in every corner of the city and the country.”
