On December 11, after more than twenty consecutive hours of debate, the lower house of the Argentine congress voted to legalize abortion. The upper house will vote on December 29. If the law is approved, Argentina will join Uruguay and Cuba as the third country in Latin America to allow abortion without restriction.

The fight for abortion in Argentina has been building for decades, taking its current form in 2005, when the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion was launched. Since then, the campaign’s motto “sex education to choose, contraception to not abort, legal abortion to not die” has put into stark contrast the life-or-death stakes of the fight.

Abortion in Argentina is now only legal in case of rape, or if the life of the pregnant person is at risk. According to Amnesty International estimates, each year in Argentina, almost half a million people end pregnancies illegally, en la clandestinidad. Those who are rich and can afford it get surgical abortions in private clinics. More commonly, people induce abortions with misoprostol, an abortifacient typically prescribed to prevent stomach ulcers that, until 2018, when its sale at pharmacies was legalized, could only be accessed at hospitals. Those who can’t afford safe surgical abortions or misoprostol resort to at-home methods or shady clinics.