A Tide of Hope for Argentina, Latin America, and the World

On December 30, 2020, the world waited anxiously for the close of an undeniably challenging year. Meanwhile, in the southern hemisphere, a nation was witnessing an event that also marked the end of a painful chapter, and the beginning of a new hope. That morning, after 12 hours of debate, the Senate of Argentina approved a law that will increase access to abortion and post-abortion care.

The bill, which the executive branch had sent to Congress, fulfills a promise made by President Alberto Fernández in his keynote address for the legislative year. Twenty days after its approval in the Chamber of Deputies, with 38 votes in favor, 29 against, one abstention, and four absent, access to abortion through the 14th week of gestation became law along with “The 1,000-Day Plan,” legislation that seeks to guarantee the protection of children under the age of 3 and pregnant women, adolescents, and girls in vulnerable situations through the provision of subsidies and free basic supplies, among other measures.

The new abortion law is a result of decades of activism by Argentine feminists. Open and free access to legal abortion has been an unceasing demand and a central issue in the organization and mobilization of the feminist movement. From 2015 onward, this demand became massive alongside the emergence of “Ni Una Menos” (Not One Woman Less), a feminist movement focused on exposing gender violence and its cruelest expression, femicide, but which ultimately ended up pushing other feminist claims as well. “Ni Una Menos” triggered mass protests and demonstrations in which a huge number of people — many of them youngsters — in green handkerchiefs came out to actively demand the legalization of abortion. The handkerchiefs, which originated as the symbol of a previous feminist movement called National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion, took over the streets and shaped a “green tide” no longer avoidable for the public eye and policymakers.

The origins of the struggle for legal abortion that led to the formation of the “green tide” can be traced all the way back to the 1970s, according to Monica Tarducci, Ph.D., an anthropologist and renowned feminist activist and researcher whose current academic interest is in the Argentine feminist movement. Back then, in the “second wave” of feminism, there were already groups that were publicly protesting for the right to an unfettered sexuality and demanding the legalization of abortion. In 1988, the Commission for the Right to Abortion was started by a group of feminist activists. Four years later, the group presented the first draft of the Contraception and Abortion bill in the Chamber of Deputies. The commission’s slogan, “contraceptives to not abort, legal abortion to not die” (with the later addition of “sex education to decide...”), continues to resonate in Argentina today.

During the 1990s, activists managed to build additional organized support in the fight to legalize abortion. Having built a framework at the 2003 and 2004 National Women’s Meetings (an annual feminist federal gathering), in 2005 feminists created the “National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe, and Free Abortion.” This coalition is comprised of groups and individuals from different parts of the country who, while belonging to different social, political, and cultural extractions, together raise the flag for the common objective of a universal recognition of sexual and reproductive rights.

For 15 years, the campaign continually proposed bills for the decriminalization and legalization of abortion, while carrying out valuable groundwork to promote cultural change including workshops, debates, awareness campaigns, and social media actions. The last attempt, in 2018, was approved by the Chamber of Deputies but blocked in the Senate. But the iconic green handkerchiefs held on to the powerful space that they captured in the public imagination.

Until now, abortion in Argentina was considered a “crime against life,” except when performed to “avoid danger to the life or health” of the woman, or when the pregnancy was the result of rape or “an assault on the modesty of an idiot or insane woman” — language dating to the early 20th century.

Beyond these assumptions, there is a whole universe of people who have had to go underground to get an abortion, putting their health and lives at risk. In Argentina, it is estimated there are around 450,000 induced abortions annually. The latest official data published by LatFem (a feminist media organization) show that in 2016, nationwide 43 people died from pregnancies that ended in abortion, raising the numbers to 3,040 deaths for the period between 1983 and 2016.

Even in cases of nonpunishable abortion, effective access to this right has not always been guaranteed. Repeatedly, the media have echoed complaints about serious failures in the implementation of the hospital protocols developed for accessing abortion care.

The new law places Argentina on the meager list of Latin American and Caribbean countries where abortion is currently legal in broad terms: Cuba, Guyana, and Uruguay. At the other end, countries such as Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador completely prohibit the practice. Criminalization has not meant a reduction in the number of abortions. The Guttmacher Institute warns that between 2010 and 2014, some 6.5 million induced abortions were performed annually in the region. Thirty-two percent of pregnancies ended in abortion, and more than half of them (60%) were categorized as “less safe” procedures.

Given that Latin America and the Caribbean is one of the regions of the world with the highest rates of socioeconomic vulnerability, much remains to be done to protect the millions of women, girls, and pregnant people whose socioeconomic status increases the probability of experiencing unsafe abortions. In 2018, the near legalization of abortion in Argentina unleashed a wave of handkerchiefs of different colors in several countries of the continent (Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, among others), making visible the demands by Latin American feminist groups on this issue. It might be too early to assume that Argentina’s law will actually produce a “domino effect.” But there is empirical evidence to support the euphoria that the news unleashed: Especially since 2000, the global trend in abortion legislation has been toward liberalization. Heading this direction, only two weeks after the passage of the new law in Argentina, the Commission on Women and Gender Equity of the Chilean Chamber of Deputies began debate on the decriminalization of voluntary abortion up to the 14th week of gestation.

Within Argentina, the future is promising but not without questions. In the short term, opponents of the law threaten to challenge its constitutionality, a fight that could eventually reach international authorities. In the medium and long term, we must be attentive to issues such as the impact of the conscientious objection that can be claimed by health professionals under the law. The adoption of a law does not guarantee the effective enjoyment of a right.

The fight for recognition of sexual and reproductive rights is not over. Legal abortion is undoubtedly a fundamental milestone, but it is necessary to continue the push for mobilization from the trenches of daily life — at home, at school, in college, with groups of friends, even in social media. Only this way will we be able to write a new story, fairer and more inclusive, for the country, the region, and the world.