The Commission for Social Action and Public Health of the Chamber of Deputies advanced in the opinion of the project to regulate the professional practice of obstetrics, which seeks to prioritize the work of midwives and expand their responsibilities so that they can, for example, prescribe and place long-acting contraceptive methods in primary health care.
The commission, chaired by the socialist deputy Mónica Fein, gave its endorsement to the initiative that proposes to establish a general framework for the exercise of the Degree in Obstetricswhich still needs to be debated in the General Legislation commission.
At the end of the meeting, Fein maintained that “We have taken a big step. Hopefully this year we will have a law”after passing through the Senate.
The initiative is based on the “principles of integrity, ethics, bioethics, suitability, equity, collaboration and solidarity, applied to the assistance, accompaniment and care of users of the health service who go through any obstetric event”.
The foundations of the initiative
During the debate, two projects were taken into account, one by the official Mónica Macha and another by the PRO deputy Silvia Lospennato, with the idea of agreeing on a unified text although some modifications will be made to it.
When exposing about the project, Lospennato stressed that “we are taking a step that is necessary for the sexual and reproductive health of women to reduce the mortality of our children and pregnancy in adolescence and, mainly, it will be a recognition of them who have always been there to help society grow but who are lagging behind and we need to settle this debt”.
For her part, Deputy Mara Brawer (Frente de Todos) said that this initiative is “the kind of laws that we should no longer be discussing, it has to do with the paradigm shift.”
Meanwhile, a campaign led by an obstetrician to collect signatures (www.change.org/MidwivesLaw) has gathered more than 20,000 supporters demanding the urgent sanction of the norm.
“We obstetric professionals have a law that regulates our professional practice, modified during the military dictatorship (1967) where we were reduced to a “collaborative activity”. Since the restoration of democracy, our law has not been modified,” says Mónica Juárez, promoter of the bell.
Both initiatives -Lospennato’s and Macha’s- The professional practice of obstetrics is considered to be activities related to the care of pregnant people at all stages of their sexual and reproductive life.in accordance with what is established by the specific responsibilities of their university degree and the recommendations from the Ministry of Health and international agreements.
Meanwhile, in the foundations of his initiative, Macha points out that “the spirit of this project continues to highlight the preventive essence of this profession, and its fundamental role in complying with and defending the human rights involved in its care tasks.”
“The obstetric professionals receive education and training to provide health care from the promotion, prevention (diagnosis and treatment), protection, recovery and rehabilitation within the care field; with the possibility of covering the administrative field, teaching and the field of investigation”, raised the deputy Macha.
