https://themilitant.com/2020/03/07/campaign-for-womens-right-to-abortion-launched-in-argentina/
Campaign for women’s right to abortion launched in Argentina
article
BY EMMA JOHNSON
Vol. 84/No. 10
March 16, 2020
NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR THE RIGHT TO LEGAL, SAFE AND FREE ABORTION Tens of
thousands march Feb. 19 in Buenos Aires for legalization of abortion in
Argentina.
Young women lead campaign for right to choose and play key role in
building support. figure
Tens of thousands march Feb. 19 in Buenos Aires for legalization of
abortion in Argentina. Young women lead campaign for right to choose and
play key role
in building support.
NATIONAL CAMPAIGN FOR THE RIGHT TO LEGAL, SAFE AND FREE ABORTION Tens of
thousands march Feb. 19 in Buenos Aires for legalization of abortion in
Argentina.
Young women lead campaign for right to choose and play key role in
building support. figure end
Led by young women, fighters for abortion rights are on the move in
Argentina. In the past few years they have organized a series of large
mobilizations,
won growing support and forced a first-ever vote on legalization in the
National Congress that lost by only a few votes in 2018. This vote came
just a
few months after hundreds of thousands marched in cities across the
country on International Women’s Day, March 8. Now they’re pressing to
win a new vote.
“I have been active in this campaign for 15 years and we have seen a
huge change over the recent period, I would say since 2015,” Victoria
Tesoriero, a
spokesperson for the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and
Free Abortion, told the Militant by phone from Buenos Aires Feb. 28.
“The next
few days are very important to us. The president opens this session of
Congress March 1 and he says he will present a bill to legalize abortion.”
The details of the bill President Alberto Fernández will introduce have
not yet been made public. The 2018 bill would have made abortion legal
in the first
14 weeks of pregnancy.
“We organized a big mobilization Feb. 19 with tens of thousands
participating across the country to put pressure on the government and
the president,”
Tesoriero said.
Young women lead the way
The growing strength of the movement and popularity of the campaign
reflect a transformation in people’s attitudes. Tesoriero said an
important change
is how widely and openly abortion is discussed today, as opposed to
before when nobody talked about it.
“We have a new generation joining. Most significant is the number of
young women, 15, 16, 17 years old. They play a key role in winning
others, including
their mothers and other family members,” she said. “And we have
international support. While Congress debated in 2018 there were actions
in front of Argentine
embassies in 100 cities around the world.”
In today’s mobilizations, chants like “It’s my body, I decide” are
popular, reflecting the view that the fight is a question of equal
protection under
the law and a democratic right for women.
“We have always campaigned that abortion is a health issue,” Tesoriero
said. “We believe this is how you can win support broadly among the
general public.”
Under Argentina’s current law abortion is legal only in cases of rape or
risk to a woman’s life or health. Women in the ruling class and middle
classes
can afford to end an unwanted pregnancy by seeing costly doctors in the
big cities or outside the country. But working-class women and those
living in
rural areas are forced to turn to “clandestine” abortions, the leading
cause of maternal death in the country today.
The forces leading the opposition are Catholic and evangelical church
officials. The Catholic bishops conference has launched a campaign, “Yes
to woman,
yes to life,” to stop the decriminalization. Their next action against
changing the law will be a Mass on International Women’s Day in the
national shrine
of Our Lady of Luján, patroness of Argentina.
Growing numbers of Catholics do not follow the call of the bishops, a
reflection of the broader changes in public opinion in recent years.
Catholics for
Choice is one of the stronger groups marching for abortion rights today.
Fight to broaden support
“But one thing we are trying to do is take abortion out of being seen as
only part of the feminist agenda,” Tesoriero said. “We’re reaching out
to win
other organizations, like unions in factories and industries, where men
mostly work. Workers in the public health sector have organized and
affiliated
with us, which is very important.”
Another challenge she said is to win support in rural areas. “I don’t
think women in the countryside are organized.”
But women there are being won to the fight. In 2007, 20-year-old Anna
María Acevedo, mother of three children in the province of Santa Fe,
died in a cesarean
delivery 22 weeks into her pregnancy, as did her fetus. Diagnosed with
cancer, she was refused treatment on grounds that radiotherapy could
hurt the fetus.
Her case focused national and international attention on Argentina’s laws.
“Her mother has now become a supporter of legalizing abortion and
campaigns in the countryside,” Tesoriero said. “People like her will
lead the way to
others in rural areas.”
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