“We can conceive another history”: Trans activism around abortion rights in Argentina

Abstract

Background: A growing body of work focuses on transgender reproductive justice. However, little research has been undertaken on trans activists’ contributions to reproductive justice movements in general, or to abortion rights movements in particular. Countries where trans identities are depathologized, such as Argentina, provide a unique opportunity to study challenges, achievements, and demands around reproductive justice for trans individuals in contexts where reproductive trans bodies are enabled to exist and may obtain legal gender recognition. Aims: To explore critical interventions by trans and travesti activists and organizations in Argentina around the issue of abortion rights. Methods: This paper analyses public speeches, publications, artwork, and flyers by trans and travesti activists and organizations in Argentina. Results: Trans contributions to abortion rights struggles have established common ground between trans and feminist/women’s movements around reproductive justice, have negotiated the inclusion of trans masculine persons within the abortion rights movement (both as activists and as potential users of abortion services), and have pointed to the country’s depathologized Gender Identity Law as a potential model for abortion regulations. Discussion: This paper concludes by discussing trans and travesti activists’ contributions to framing abortion rights within a wider social and political agenda at the intersection between health, gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy, which furthers the work done by reproductive justice perspectives.