The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, once again lashed out at feminist groups and attacked the legal abortion law. This time he held them responsible for the low birth rate recorded in the country, a phenomenon that, according to the president, carries economic consequences that worsen the current crisis.
“We are paying dearly for the madness of the green scarves,” Milei said last week during a speech at the annual Council of the Americas conference, held in Buenos Aires and organized by the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and the American organization Americas Society. The event gathers businessmen, officials, and governors every year.
The president deepened his criticism by pointing out the consequences that, in his view, low birth rates generate. “That passion for killing children in the mother’s womb is costing us in terms of growth and social security matters. Also in human capital,” he added, and stated that “Argentina does not reach the population and birth growth rate that allows for replacement.”
This is not the first time the libertarian president links both phenomena. Last May he had already stated that, “in terms of abortions, Argentina made a disaster so that you have such a drop in the reproduction rate,” and in January 2024, during his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he attacked what he called the “bloody abortion agenda.”
In the neighboring country, voluntary termination of pregnancy is allowed up to the 14th week of gestation inclusive, safely, legally, and free of charge throughout the public health system, social security, and private health insurance, without the need to give explanations. Law 27610 has been in effect since January 2021 and represents a milestone for the feminist movement throughout Latin America.
However, official data contradict the direct relationship proposed by the president. According to an analysis by El DiarioAR based on figures from the , dependent on the Ministry of Health of Argentina, the number of births began to fall sharply from 2014, six years before Congress passed the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVE) Law.
That year, 777,012 live births were recorded, while in 2020, when the law was approved, the figure had already dropped to 533,299, a reduction of 31.4%. In contrast, in 2024 – the year of the latest available data – 413,135 births were counted, 22.5% less than in 2020.
With this, the decline in birth rates before the law was greater than after its entry into force, according to the information cited by the neighboring media outlet.
Added to this is the evolution of teenage fertility, which has also been falling since 2011, at an even faster rate than general fertility. In 2023 it stood at 11.5 births per thousand adolescents between 10 and 19 years old, a 64% reduction compared to 2005.
The phenomenon would not be limited to the reproductive policy law either, but there is a decline in the reproductive intention of the population. A study by the Austral University of Argentina – published by La Nación – showed that only 46% of Argentines consider having children very important, compared to 77% a decade ago.
A survey by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) also found that 57% of people between 18 and 45 years old have not yet reached the number of children they would have liked to have. “Against the widespread idea that people do not want to have children, that desire remains present in a significant proportion of the population. It is not only that people decide to have fewer children, but also that many do not find the necessary conditions to fulfill their reproductive desires,” the report states.
On the other hand, the media outlet El Destape argued that the decline in birth rates occurs both in countries with legal abortion and in those where it is prohibited or severely restricted, making it difficult to attribute it to feminist groups or organizations dedicated to free abortion.
In that sense, the goal of the president’s statements would seem – more than explaining a demographic phenomenon – to reactivate a cultural battle, according to the Argentine media.
Also, according to World Bank data cited by El DiarioAR, the global birth rate has been declining for decades. Specifically, in Latin America the decline has been recorded for more than half a century, with an acceleration from the 2010s.
According to the director of Gender at the Fundar Foundation of Argentina, María de las Nieves Puglia, the percentage of new births “in Argentina becomes very clear that it plummets from 2014.”
Along the same lines, the professor at the Institute of Family Sciences of the Austral University of Argentina, Dolores Dimier, defined to El DiarioAR the decline as a multicausal phenomenon and mentioned the incorporation of women into the workforce, difficulties in balancing work and parenting, and changes in the life projects of younger generations.
The UNFPA, which placed the Argentine rate at 1.2 children per woman – one of the lowest in the region – had stated in June 2025 that it is economic and social barriers that prevent millions of people from planning larger families. “The report shows that a harmful combination of economic precariousness and sexism influences many of these problems,” the agency explained.
Despite the harshness of the right-wing leader’s discourse, sources from the Argentine government assured La Nación that there are no immediate plans to repeal the law. “There is nothing of that sort at the moment,” they said. A Casa Rosada official added that “it is not a suitable time to have that kind of debate.”
Days earlier, libertarian senator Nadia Márquez, one of the main detractors of the IVE law, had acknowledged to the same newspaper that the government “does not have the votes” to push for its repeal, although she assured that the debate for the elimination of the law will come later.
The same newspaper recalled that in February 2024 legislators from La Libertad Avanza, Milei’s party, had already presented a bill to repeal the law, without success.
In that sense, according to El Destape, the dispute raised by Milei would respond more to a cultural alignment with right-wing sectors than to a diagnosis of how birth rates would affect the economy.
The media linked the libertarian’s discourse with an international conservative network that has been promoting the pro-life agenda among the new right for years, such as the Geneva Consensus Declaration – originally promoted by Donald Trump – and the Political Network of Values (PNfV).
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