The Green Wave

#AbortoLegal2020

At dawn on December 11, Argentina moved one step closer to becoming only the fourth country in Latin America to legalize abortion as the lower house of Congress passed a bill for the legal interruption of pregnancy, 131 in favor to 117 against. The Senate, which rejected a similar bill in 2018, is scheduled to vote on the issue on December 29. As the house deliberated for 20 hours, thousands of women and feminists held a vigil outside in support of reproductive rights and autonomy, implementing an infrastructure of care that allowed them to come together despite the pandemic. In doing so, they defied both the conditions created by the pandemic, but also the conservative backlash that is attacking reproductive rights around the world, as recently seen in Poland.

The passage of the bill – that will save countless lives – is the result of decades of activism by feminists, women, and people with the capacity to gestate, which coalesced in the National Campaign for Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion and also multiplied into numerous associations and organizations, which have been able to connect the criminalization of abortion to other forms of gender-based violence, including economic violence, state violence, and environmental violence, and to the struggle for women’s autonomy – recalling the concept of reproductive justice as developed by Black women in the US to account for the multiple elements that would enable safe and autonomous reproduction.

Still the Argentinian bill, drafted by the government, includes the possibility of conscientious objection, which means that a health care worker or institution can refuse to administer abortion services on the grounds of conscience or religious belief. Since the experience of other countries, such as Italy and Germany, have shown this possibility can significantly undermine access to abortion services, it is therefore fiercely criticized by the Campaign and other feminist groups. The conflict over the right to safe access to abortion will therefore continue.

But – as one speaker at the vigil in Buenos Aires said – public opinion on the question of abortion has changed in the last 15 years in a way that was not imaginable then. In any case, the effect of feminist organizing goes far beyond the parliamentary debate and national borders. December 29 will be the next step for a transnational feminist movement, with the Argentinian National Campaign for Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion calling for solidarity actions all around the world.
#EsAhoraSenado | #AbortoLegal2020