Pope Francis and Argentine President Javier Milei share a laugh during a private audience at the Vatican February 12, 2024. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, says abortion “is murder aggravated by the bond” between mother and child and condemned the so-called “voluntary interruption of pregnancy”, a euphemism for killing the child in the womb.
The statement was part of a March 6 speech at the beginning of classes at the secondary level at Cardenal Copello School in Buenos Aires, where Mr Milei was a student.
In Argentine penal law, “homicide aggravated by the bond” is a degree of murder in which the killer and the victim are related by blood or intimate relationship.
The president, who during his election campaign had pledged that he was going to repeal the country’s permissive abortion law, also took aim at the “murderers with green neckerchiefs”, referring to the neckerchiefs imprinted with the message “legal, safe, and free abortion” that were worn or displayed by activists during their campaign to get abortion legalised in 2020 at the start of President Alberto Fernández’s term in office.
“For me, abortion is a murder aggravated by the bond and I can demonstrate that from a mathematical and philosophical perspective, from liberalism and also from a biological perspective,” the president said before an auditorium full of students and teachers at the school.
“What politicians do,” Mr Milei continued, “is party and pass the bill to generations that haven’t even been born, and some politicians, who also try to kill, are the murderers with the green neckerchiefs”.
Although Mr Milei’s government has expressed its opposition to abortion on numerous occasions, in his first three months as president he hasn’t introduced any specific bill. In Argentina, a bill can also be introduced in congress by the executive branch.