Legal obstacles and social change: strategies of the abortion rights movement in Argentina

Abstract

On April 2018, the Argentine Congress began debating a bill proposing the legalization of abortion on request for the first time in the country´s history. Although it passed in the Lower Chamber, the bill failed to be approved by the Senate. However, the legislative debate showed the strength of the Argentinean abortion rights movement. Since the mid-2000s, and as a reaction to political paralysis in the area of abortion rights, activists in this country developed three main strands of strategies, which differed in terms of their time-frames, levels of institutionalization, targets, and scales. Based on original field research, this article analyzes the way in which each of these three tracks addressed the state, the current legal framework and the need for legal reform. It argues that, when legal reform is blocked, different movement sectors may develop parallel strategies to increase access to their demands within the existing normative framework. Through their diverse strategies, they test the limits of the law, challenge hegemonic legal interpretations and re-interpret what is permissible in alternative ways. In addition, the interaction between the different strategies created a powerful synergy that strengthened the movement and made the recent legislative debate possible, even under the leadership of an anti-choice president. Given the similarities of the Argentinean restrictive legal framework and movement strategies with those throughout Latin America, these arguments are relevant for the assessment of current developments within abortion rights movements and their interactions with the legal system in other countries in the region.