BUENOS AIRES – It was only two years ago that the organizers of a rioting women’s movement in Argentina suffered a bitter loss, and their attempts to legalize abortions were rejected in the Senate after intense lobbying by the Catholic Church.
This week, after their efforts culminated in a major vote to make Argentina the largest Latin American country to legalize abortions, it became clear that the loss was an important step in further changing the discourse around feminism in their country. .
“We managed to break the prejudice, and the discussion became much less dramatic,” Lucila Crexell said. He was among the senators who voted Wednesday to legalize abortions. She was one of two lawmakers to abstain in the 2018 vote. “The wider society has begun to understand the debate more moderately and less fanatically.”
The shift was visible on the streets: What was the beginning of a series of marches by young women has begun to look like a real national movement in recent years. Older women joined the protests, and men too. Blue-collar workers performed with professionals, and rural fighters linked hands to the urban base of the movement.
They supported a movement that formally started in 2015 in anger over the murder of women – its name is Ni Una Menos, or not one woman less – and his message begins to focus on the toll that underground abortions demand.
But the seed of its success was planted more than a generation ago in the campaigns by mothers and grandmothers who disappeared, helping to usher in years of military junta in Argentina in the 1980s. As abortion rights activists waved their distinctive green handkerchiefs over the past few years, they followed in the footsteps of Argentine women, who challenged the abuses of the generals by wearing white handkerchiefs.
“Argentina has an established tradition when it comes to popular organizations and mobilizations,” said Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta, Minister for Women, Gender and Diversity. “The street, as we call it, has a powerful effect on the conquest of rights.”
Women also gained a critical mass in Congress that could shape the debate over abortion rights, as a quota law only reserved a third of the legislative seats for them in the 1990s and was later expanded to require equality.
In this latest vote and victory, lawmakers have drafted abortion rights as a matter of social justice and public health – dozens of women die each year in search of abortions, according to Argentina’s Access to the Safe Abortion Network.
Legislators who this time changed their voices to support legalization acknowledged that such an essay had a major impact.
“We are going through a paradigm shift, and this change is being led by the feminist and environmental struggles,” said Silvina García Larraburu, a senator from the province of Rio Negro, who voted against legalization in 2018, but for it. “Apart from my personal position, according to my beliefs, we face a problem that requires an approach to public health.”
That essay also made the attempt politically palatable for President Alberto Fernández, a left-wing law professor elected in 2019, to make legalizing abortions a campaign promise and 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 bill. “Those who can not go through very difficult circumstances.”
Argentine feminists took up the cause of abortion rights as early as the 1980s, but the issue found little political traction at a time when democracy itself seemed fragile in the wake of the military dictatorship, and when religious conservatism gained a large foothold in the public sphere. had debate. .
The formal campaign began in 2005, with the establishment of the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion, a leaderless umbrella organization that had legitimacy as its sole purpose.
They introduced a first bill in 2008 – just to avoid the vast majority of legislators, who feared they could be associated with the subject, hurting them politically without delivering results, as it was considered no chance to go through against the Catholics. Church lobbying.
“Many said they agreed but refused to put their signature on the bill,” said Julia Martino, an activist who contributed to it.
Feminist groups continued every two years to present abortion bills in the hope of keeping the cause alive. But it was a series of particularly brutal murders of women, including those of a 14-year-old pregnant teenager in 2015, that fueled their long search for turbo and spurred the creation of Ni Una Menos.
Their effort caused many women in Argentina to galvanize, causing massive street demonstrations and leading to a broad reckoning of sexism, gender equality, and women’s rights that other Latin American countries began to achieve.
When campaigners for abortion rights in Buenos Aires held a demonstration in late 2017 to support legalization, they were stunned by the turnout.
“What has happened to the movement is that it is starting to increase in number and get different votes,” said Claudia Piñeiro, a writer and abortion rights activist.
Dora Barrancos, 80, a government sociologist who was among the women who advocated the issue in the 1980s, said that this new generation is an ‘uprising that is contagious’.
The conspiracy during massive street demonstrations was often hard and challenging. “Down with the patriarchy, which is going to fall! It’s going to fall! A popular song went. Long live feminism, what will triumph! It will triumph! ”
Timing has also worked in favor of legalizing abortions.
The Ni Una Menos movement already pushed women’s rights into national political discourse in 2017, when Argentina passed a law that expanded the quota system in Congress, making room for women to achieve full equality in national politics.
The milestone was the work of a coalition of women lawmakers who, while strategizing on WhatsApp groups and other institutions, found that they work well together even on political differences.
The relationship they built to fight for a greater female presence in the legislature enabled women to break ranks with male political elders and to forge a new form of politics that was cooperative, pragmatic, and largely without adults. .
“We have realized how powerful we as women are when we act in a coordinated manner,” said Silvia Lospennato, a member of Congress, associated with former President Mauricio Macri, a center-right abortionist leader.
“We have all contributed to a way of doing politics that is very deviant and completely different from the way men do politics,” she said. Lospennato said.
After parity prevailed, many female lawmakers saw a way to legalize abortions in 2018. The effort went up in a national movement, but fell short in the Senate after a fierce campaign by the Catholic Church – and in particular by Pope Francis, himself Argentine.
The following year, Mr. Fernández, who has long supported the right to legal abortion, is campaigning for the president as a feminist. His campaign poster contains a gender-neutral version of the word ‘todos’, meaning all, in which the letter ‘o’ is replaced by the symbol of the sun.
After being in office, Mr. Fernández set up a ministry dedicated to the promotion of women’s rights. And he promised that he would put the weight of the executive behind the attempt to legalize abortions.
“He saw there was a grassroots movement he wanted to seize,” said Maria Victoria Murillo, a professor of political science at Columbia University in Argentina. “Argentine politicians are very focused on street movements.”
Mr. Fernández celebrated the victory in the Senate, where the measure passed with a wider lead than many expected in the chamber and beyond.
“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.