A law to exempt men from fatherhood in Argentina!

Argentine President Javier Mele is considered an opponent of feminist associations, since his election campaigns in 2021, when he considered the issue of women and the environment to be just “nonsense” (Getty)

As is usual in Latin American countries, International Women's Day witnessed massive demonstrations in all the region's capitals and its most important cities, where female demonstrators demanded slogans of equality, the right to abortion, and the rejection of violence and crime against women.

At a time when some female demonstrators this year - in the capitals of Argentina, Colombia and Mexico - raised the flag of Palestine, as a message of support for Palestinian women, some statements appeared in the same arena that reminded men of the “rights” and exaggerated their support, such as a female representative in the Argentine parliament demanding that men be granted The right to refuse paternity of a fetus that did not want to live, just as a woman was given the right to an abortion.

Cancel legal links

This was a draft law announced by Argentine MP Lilia Lemoine of the “Freedom Progress” party, which was founded by the current president of Argentina, the far-right Javier Meli, two and a half years ago. However, the proposal was temporarily frozen, due to the categorical rejection it faced from the rest of the parties.

The proposal, according to Representative LeMoyne, was to enable the man to refuse to be a father from the stage of pregnancy, by informing the mother of his unwillingness to play the role of the father by giving his surname to the newborn and bearing the expenses of his upbringing, education, and treatment for 18 years, according to current Argentine law, and therefore the mother has the right to decide. In this case, continuing to carry the fetus, give birth, then raise it unilaterally, or have an abortion.

In both cases, any legal link between the father and the biological son is cancelled.

The representative justified her proposal by saying that women have the right to decide on abortion, and rejected the role of mother that one of them can play, simply by making a decision alone, and without referring to the man. “So why don’t we give the man this right?”

According to her expression.

The representative also pointed out that there are many tricks that a woman uses to get pregnant, by which she deceives the man during the relationship, and then surprises him with the reality of pregnancy or childbirth directly, and thus he enters the cycle of recognizing the newborn and taking care of its expenses. These are tricks that are not covered in our Arab culture, but they are very common on the continent. American, and male immigrants from the East often fall prey, especially if they have money.

In fact, Representative LeMoyne is not far from the controversial ideas of her leader, President Milley, regarding women’s issues. She is essentially an “influencer” on social media. She approached the president about two years ago, and was holding a “makeup” job for him, and he suggested that she run for the legislative elections. She won it from the D.C. district, so her performance was mostly populist, like him.

Enemy of women

As for President Milley, he is considered an “enemy” of feminist associations, since his election campaigns in 2021, when he considered the issue of women and the environment to be just “nonsense,” mastered by leftists, to court public opinion and attract voters. He confirmed this as soon as he won the presidency, by abolishing the Ministry of Women.

In addition, he intends to hold a popular referendum soon on the criminalization of abortion, which the previous Fernandez government had legalized with conditions, in December 2020, after a decades-long human rights struggle, led by feminist associations and most segments of Argentine society.

In the same context as his provocative decisions, President Milli issued a presidential decree on the morning of International Women’s Day in which he replaced the name of the “Women’s Salon” in the presidential palace with the “Champions Salon,” which angered the female demonstrators in the vicinity of Parliament that day, and increased the intensity of their slogans hostile to his ideas.

On the other hand, President Milley considered that the equality that women are demanding cannot be achieved through small, meaningless details, such as naming a salon in the palace, and its monopoly over women!

Returning to the topic of fatherhood, it is important to raise the issue of fathers’ responsibilities in Latin societies, from recognizing lineage to covering children’s expenses, given that these societies suffer from a high incidence of early pregnancy, pregnancy outside of marriage, and chaotic intimate relationships in general.

Therefore, it is very natural that it is a norm in educational institutions not to ask students about their parents, out of consideration for the feelings of those whose parentage is unknown, and perhaps many famous Latin football players are the best example of this, as most of them are of unknown parentage.

An extreme proposal

Although Argentina is considered more systematic than the rest of the countries of South America with regard to this phenomenon, there are 1.6 million women alone who have approximately 3 million children, 50% of whom do not receive any financial contribution from their fathers, if they exist, and the percentage is higher in the capital, Buenos Aires. To 70%.

Representative Le Moine's proposal may be somewhat extremist in the eyes of Argentine society and feminist circles in general, but there are ideas and actions that can also be classified as extremism and exaggeration in the pro-women discourse, as happened in the capital of Mexico.

The hashtag “Crazy Women” topped the “X” platform during the International Women’s Day activities, with a video clip circulating of a young man in his twenties who was dragging his motorcycle on the outskirts of a women’s demonstration. He was asking the female demonstrators to allow him to pass, and they responded except for one, who stood in his face, pushed him, and dropped his bike.

As soon as he responded to the punch with another, they attacked him, cut off his shirt, and stripped him of it, until the “female” police, who were guarding the demonstration, intervened amidst cheers of victory.

Then the pictures showed him being taken to a police car, and the media confirmed that he was fined with a sum of money.

Although the clip was clear, some well-known media outlets chose headlines condemning the young man and accusing him of violence, but famous female personalities on social media saw otherwise and supported him and showed their willingness to pay the fine for him and repair his bike.

Whatever the progress of the feminist struggle in the Latin American region and the legitimacy of its demands, double standards remain strongly present in societies whose majority are classified as masculine and whose progressive classes aspire to bury this classification.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.