Abortion boat director arrives in Argentina

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec 13, 2004 / 22:00 pm

As the controversy surrounding abortion in Argentina widens, the director of the feminist organization “Women on the Waves,” Rebecca Gomperts of Holland, arrived in Buenos Aires last week to begin a campaign promoting the arrival of the organization’s abortion boat.

Gomperts began her pro-abortion campaign alleging that in Argentina women who want to get an abortion are “treated very badly” because they do not have access to legal abortion.

She also said she would return to Argentina in a few months aboard the abortion boat, the “Aurora,” to dock in Argentina and offer abortion services to women there.

State representative Fernanda Ferrero said Gomperts and Noemi Olivetto, the State representative who is sponsoring her visit, have no concern for “the sinister consequences this will cause.”

Ferrero called the campaign “amazingly hypocritical” because “they want to start a debate which should be carried out with the utmost seriousness and yet they display a lack of respect for life which goes way beyond the limits of what is acceptable in a media campaign.”

“The numerous press releases issued by Representative Olivetto on this issue say nothing about the juridical impossibility of this boat offering abortion services in countries that outlaw them,” said Ferrero.

Another State representative, Ricardo Lopez Murphy, denounced Gomperts for not revealing “the consequences of using RU-486, which is administered on the boat.”