Ginés González García

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Ginés González García (born 1945) is a medical doctor and, as of 2006, the Minister of Health and Environment of Argentina.

González García was born in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, province of Buenos Aires, and graduated as a surgeon at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. He was the Minister of Health of the province of Buenos Aires from 1988 to 1991. He was appointed Argentina's Minister of Health in 2002, during the term of interim President Eduardo Duhalde, and ratified in his post by President Néstor Kirchner upon taking office on 25 May 2003.

[edit] Conflict with the Church

González García became the focus of a controversy in the first months of 2005, when he was verbally attacked by the head military chaplain, bishop Antonio Baseotto, because of the minister's public support of the legalization of abortion in Argentina (where interrupting a pregnancy is a serious crime except when the mother's life is in grave danger or in cases of rape of a mentally impaired woman), as well as his endorsement of sex education and his implementation of a program of free contraception and condom distribution. (For details, see State-Church relations in Argentina.)