7 - Abortion and faith in Latin America: an interfaith perspective

Summary

Abortion in Latin America has until recently been characterised by restrictive laws and a series of high-profile cases illustrating the punitive impact that this has on girls, women and pregnant people. Activist organisations have fought long campaigns to overturn the restrictive laws in several countries, including Argentina, the primary focus of this chapter. The role of faith groups, from across Catholic and Protestant and other denominations, in contributing to historic legal change has been under-reported in this story internationally. This chapter offers a unique insider perspective on the decisive role these organisations played in campaigning for change.

I have been asked many times, ‘How can you be a feminist and a Christian?’ In this chapter, I will develop my answer as a feminist, Christian Bible scholar, a member of the Argentinian Evangelical Methodist Church (Iglesia Evangelica Metodista Argentina, IEMA), and an activist in the struggle for the legalisation of abortion. I will use the feminist genealogical method proposed by Alejandra Restrepo to articulate this question:

As far as their political character, feminist genealogies have been integrated into the political commitment to social transformation, historically put forward by the feminist movement in the struggle for women's autonomy. From there, the genealogical exercise questions the artificial division between the public and the private and supports the conviction that the personal is political. In this sense, the politicized body is a fundamental part of feminist action, and it embodies, as part of memory, the struggle for the defence of self-determination. It is no wonder that since the beginning of the resurgence of the movement globally, during the 60s and 70s of the last century, and until the present, feminists claim the reappropriation of their bodies and demand the right to free choice when it comes to maternity, legalization or decriminalization of abortion, sexual freedom, and the unconditional respect of every woman who carries in her body signs of her social, cultural, racial/ethnic, and/or age, amongst many other identities that are re/de/constructed, also with their bodies. (Restrepo, 2016)

In the nineteenth century, framed by the first wave of feminism, two predecessors are of particular significance. The first is Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an American suffragist and abolitionist, and a pioneer in the struggle for women's rights. Among her works, The Woman's Bible, written together with a committee of 26 women, stands out (Stanton 1999a, 1999b).