BUENOS AIRES – It is only two years since the organizers of a women’s movement in Argentina received what appeared to be a bitter loss, their efforts to legalize abortion rejected in the Senate after intense lobbying by the Catholic Church.
This week, after his efforts culminated in a historic vote to make Argentina the largest country in Latin America to legalize abortion, it became clear that the loss was a vital step to further change the conversation about feminism in his country.
“We were able to break the prejudice and the discussion was much less dramatic,” said Lucila Crexell, who was among the senators who voted to legalize abortion on Wednesday. She was one of two lawmakers who abstained from the 2018 vote. “Society in general has begun to understand the debate in more moderate and less fanatical terms.”
The change was visible on the street: what started as a series of marches by young women in recent years has started to look like a truly national movement. Older women joined the demonstrations, and men too. Workers joined the professionals on marches and rural activists joined hands with the movement’s urban base.
They came to support a movement that formally started in 2015 in outrage at the murder of women – their name is Ni Una Menos, or no less women – and began to focus his message on the price that illegal abortions were charging.
But the seeds of his success were planted more than a generation ago, in campaigns by mothers and grandparents of the missing who helped unleash years of military junta in Argentina in the 1980s. characteristic, they were following in the footsteps of these Argentine women, who protested against the abuses of the generals wearing white scarves.
“Argentina has a well-established tradition with regard to popular organization and mobilizations,” said Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, Argentina’s Minister for Women, Gender and Diversity. “The street, as we call it, has a powerful effect on winning rights.”
Women also gained critical mass in Congress, capable of shaping the debate on the right to abortion, since a quota law first reserved a third of legislative seats for them in the 1990s and was later expanded to demand parity.
In this latest vote, and victory, lawmakers framed the right to abortion as a matter of social justice and public health – dozens of women die each year in search of abortion, according to the Argentine Network for Access to Safe Abortion.
Lawmakers who changed their votes this time to support legalization recognized that such a structure had a big effect.
“We are undergoing a paradigm shift, and this shift is led by feminist and environmental struggles,” said Silvina García Larraburu, a senator from the province of Rio Negro who voted against legalization in 2018, but this time. “In addition to my personal position, my beliefs, we face a problem that requires a public health approach.”
This structure also made the effort politically palatable for President Alberto Fernández, a professor of left-wing law elected in 2019, to make the legalization of abortion a campaign promise and an early legislative priority.
“In Argentina, safe abortion exists for those who can pay for it,” said Vilma Ibarra, the president’s legal and technical secretary, who drafted the project. “Those who cannot, must go through very difficult conditions.”
Argentine feminists took up the cause of the right to abortion as early as the 1980s, but the issue found little political strength at a time when democracy itself seemed fragile after the military dictatorship and when religious conservatism had a strong impact on public debate.
The formal campaign began in 2005, with the foundation of the National Campaign for the Right to Safe, Free and Legal Abortion, an umbrella organization without leadership that had legalization as its sole objective.
They presented a first bill in 2008 – only to see it rejected by the vast majority of lawmakers, who feared that the association with the subject could harm them politically without yielding results, since it was seen as having no chance of approval against the Catholic The Church lobby.
“Many said they agreed, but refused to sign the project,” said Julia Martino, an activist who helped lead the effort.
Feminist groups continued to present bills on abortion every two years, hoping to keep the issue alive. But it was a series of brutal murders of women, including that of a 14-year-old pregnant teenager in 2015, that fueled her far-reaching quest and spurred the creation of Ni Una Menos.
Her effort galvanized many women in Argentina, sparking massive street demonstrations and leading to a broad assessment of sexism, gender parity and women’s rights that has begun to reach other Latin American nations.
When abortion rights activists in Buenos Aires held a demonstration to support legalization in late 2017, they were shocked by their participation.
“What happened to the movement is that it started to increase in number and to gain different voices,” said Claudia Piñeiro, writer and activist for the right to abortion.
Dora Barrancos, 80, a government sociologist who was among the women who defended the issue during the 1980s, said that this new generation has built “an uprising that is contagious”.
The war cries during the massive street demonstrations were often impetuous and defiant. “Down with patriarchy, which will fall! It will fall! ”A popular song was. “Long live feminism, which will triumph! It will triumph! “
Time has also worked in favor of the effort to legalize abortion.
The Ni Una Menos movement had already pushed women’s rights into the national political debate in 2017, when Argentina passed a law that expands the quota system in Congress, opening space for women to achieve full parity in national politics.
This milestone was the work of a coalition of lawmakers who discovered, when formulating strategies in WhatsApp groups and other environments, that they worked well together, even in the midst of political differences.
The kinship they built fighting for a greater female presence in the legislature allowed women to break the ranks with older men and forge a new form of politics that was cooperative, pragmatic and largely devoid of arrogance.
“We realize how powerful we are as women when we act in a coordinated way,” said Silvia Lospennato, a parliamentary ally of former President Mauricio Macri, a center-right leader who opposes abortion.
“We all contribute in a very anomalous way of doing politics and completely different from the way men do politics,” said Lospennato.
Having prevailed over parity, many lawmakers saw a path towards legalizing abortion in 2018. The effort turned into a national movement, but failed in the Senate after a strong campaign by the Catholic Church – and in particular by Pope Francis, himself an Argentine.
The following year, Fernández, who has long supported the right to legal abortion, campaigned for president as a feminist. His campaign poster included a gender-neutral version of the word “all”, meaning everyone, in which the letter “o” was replaced by the sun symbol.
Once in office, Mr. Fernández established a ministry dedicated to promoting women’s rights. And he promised that he would put the weight of the executive branch on the effort to legalize abortion.
“He saw that there was a grassroots movement that he wanted to conquer,” said Maria Victoria Murillo, professor of political science at Columbia University, who is Argentine. “Argentine politicians are very attentive to street movements.”
Fernández celebrated the victory in the Senate, where the measure was approved by a wider margin than many, in the Chamber and outside, had predicted.
“Safe, legal and free abortion is the law,” he said on Twitter. “Today we are a better society.”
Daniel Politi reports from Argentina and Ernesto Londoño reports from Rio de Janeiro.