Hot Topic

On Friday evening, I found myself at a very interesting place. Not physically, because, we all know I´m in Argentina...or so I have been told. I never actually did see a ¨Bienvanidos a Argentina¨ sign. But sitting around the table with my foreign family, and we got into a heated discussion.

The topic: ABORTION

I´m not one to push my views on anyone, and my family isn´t crazy conservative, yet there was a major difference in opinion. With the language barrier, I found it very difficult to make my point, so instead I kept saying ¨ciao, niños¨ and drawing a big X over my tummy. Surprisingly, everyone found this quite amusing. Getting down to the nitty gritty, I learned that in this country, abortions are illegial, that there are MANY young single mothers, and that contraceptives are widly available for free.

After the word ¨selfish¨ was thrown into the mix, I gave the ¨what if¨ senerio of an 11 year old girl... and the phrase ¨rape¨ somehow got mixed in. I followed with the ¨fatal disease¨ instance, and topped it off with the ¨deadly for mother¨ bit. The cherry on top came when I reminded them that I was working in an orphanage of 300 kids. Even without the last resort of abortion, this could have been prevented. I explained the actual purpose of the ¨morning after pill,¨ because it was thought that this was a ¨Kill Pill.¨ We ended up joking and there was more laughing in this conversation than when we discussed the history of The Simpsons.

Odd.

In the end, however, we all agreed on the need for more sex education and better availability of condoms. I will chalk this up as one of my favorite stories while here; I learned a lot and it got us talking about the history of the word ¨Fuck.¨

I´ll get back to you on that.