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Feminist Mobilization and the Abortion Debate in Latin America: Lessons from Argentina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2021

Mariela Daby Open the ORCID record for Mariela Daby [Opens in a new window]  and
Mason W. Moseley Open the ORCID record for Mason W. Moseley [Opens in a new window]
Mariela Daby
Affiliation:
Reed College
Mason W. Moseley
Affiliation:
West Virginia University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

When Argentine president Mauricio Macri announced in March 2018 that he supported a “responsible and mature” national debate regarding the decriminalization of abortion, it took many by surprise. In a Catholic country with a center-right government, where public opinion regarding abortion had hardly moved in decades—why would the abortion debate surface in Argentina when it did? Our answer is grounded in the social movements literature, as we argue that the organizational framework necessary for growing the decriminalization movement had already been built by an emergent feminist movement of unprecedented scope and influence: Ni Una Menos. By expanding the movement's social justice frame from gender violence to encompass abortion rights, feminist activists were able to change public opinion and expand the scope of debate, making salient an issue that had long been politically untouchable. We marshal evidence from multiple surveys carried out before, during, and after the abortion debate and in-depth interviews to shed light on the sources of abortion rights movements in unlikely contexts.

Keywords

AbortionLatin AmericaArgentinaabortion legalizationfeminist social movementsprotest
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 359 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

The authors thank Ernesto Calvo, Jennifer Piscopo, and four anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Participants in a panel at the 2019 Midwest Political Science Association Conference also provided valuable feedback. Replication data are available at https://www.marieladaby.com/publications.

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