Why Argentina - and the rest of us - need a UN women's agency

A new report from Human Rights Watch claims women in Argentina are suffering from inadequate reproductive healthcare - just one of the reasons why the world's women need strong leadership from the UN. Anybody wonder why we need a UN women's agency? Maybe the latest report from Human Rights Watch - out today - will offer some clues. It's about Argentina - not the poorest or the least sophisticated or illiberal country in the world. It voted to legalise gay marriage, after all. It has a woman president. Yet thousands of women and girls there, says the report, "suffer needlessly every year because of negligent or abusive reproductive health care".     "Many become pregnant due to negligent care that deprives them of the right to make independent decisions about their health and lives, such as when the government does not purchase or distribute contraceptive supplies that it has promised to provide, and legal sterilization procedures are arbitrarily denied. Others are forced to carry life-threatening pregnancies to term because medical providers refuse to provide abortions services that, in these circumstances, are legal. Some choose to seek alternative and at times highly unsafe abortions from unlicensed providers. Others forego care entirely, and some even die. In 2008, according to Argentina's national health ministry, over 20 percent of deaths recorded due to obstetric emergencies were caused by unsafe abortions. The ministry does not publish data on whether any of these cases pertained to abortions that might have been carried out legally." more on www.ippf.org