by Agustina Ordoqui

The parliament of Chile is due to vote on liberalising abortion rights before the end of the year. Back in July, the country’s left-wing president, Gabriel Boric, vowed he would present a bill in December to legalise the procedure in what will be the third attempt to expand abortion access in the country in recent years. In 2021, a law allowing voluntary termination of pregnancy up to 14 weeks failed to pass in parliament, while voters rejected a new constitution that would have enshrined reproductive rights in a referendum in 2022.

But this time, feminists believe it could be different. Even
though the right gained more power in the regional elections in October, they say progress is still possible.

Siomara Molina, a spokesperson of the campaign group, Permanent Assembly for the Legalisation of Abortion cites the passing by parliament of a “Chile cares” system of recognising care work, a new comprehensive law against gender-based violence and a move to provide benefits to the children of feminicide victims as major successes in women’s rights despite the challenging political context. Since the failure of the constitutional referendum, Chilean feminist organisations have been working with members of parliament and the ministries of health and gender
equality to gather support for abortion reform.

Until 2017, Chile was one of the few countries in the world to completely prohibit abortion in all circumstances, a law that dated back to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. This changed when former president Michelle Bachelet introduced a law to permit terminations in very limited circumstances: in cases of risk to the patient’s life, if the foetus is not viable, or in cases of rape. Even these exceptions are only permitted up to 12 weeks, forcing as many as 150,000 people a year to have unsafe abortions.

Since then, Latin America has been swept by the
“green wave” – organised feminist movements that have used strategic litigation, political pressure and mass movements on the streets to achieve major reproductive rights victories across the continent from Argentina to Colombia and Mexico. 

Molina, who has been helping women who need abortions for years, says the far-right might be growing in Chile, but the green wave is “going forward anyway”. 

“Nowadays, women can speak out in a way that they couldn’t ten years ago,” she said.
“There’s a transformation of mentality – that it is not acceptable to be raped and that we have the right to have an abortion, things that ten years ago were understood differently.”

Victory in the courts

Green wave activists have adopted different strategies around Latin America, depending on the particular context of each country. In Argentina, where abortion was legalised in December 2020, campaigners focused on changing the law in parliament, with a strong focus  on shifting public opinion. In Colombia, the national movement Causa Justa (Just Cause) secured the decriminalisation of abortion through a constitutional court ruling in February 2022. Mexico’s supreme court decriminalised abortion in September 2021 with a
mandate for each state to pass its own law – feminists have now secured abortion rights in 18 of the country’s 32 states. 

While Chile is focusing on changing legislation through its parliament as Argentina did, Ecuadorian feminists are seeking to follow Colombia’s footsteps and obtain the right to terminate pregnancy up to 24 weeks of pregnancy through the courts. Earlier this year, eight organisations came together to form the Justa Libertad (Rightful Freedom) movement. In March, the group filed a petition seeking to completely eliminate abortion from the penal code.

Currently, the code punishes those who have an abortion or perform one with six months to two years in prison. Until 2021, a termination was authorised only if there was risk to the patient’s life or if a disabled woman was raped. That year, a constitutional court ruling expanded the exception to include all rape survivors.

Latin America has typically followed a model
of “gradually obtaining exceptions to interrupt a pregnancy,” says Valeska Chiriboga, a spokesperson for Justa Libertad. “But we realised that this model was not sufficient, because it continued to create barriers to universal and legal access to abortion.” That’s why they are now aiming for full decriminalisation up to 24 weeks, which would make Ecuador’s abortion law one of the most progressive in the world. 

As in Colombia, Justa Libertad has chosen strategic litigation because the parliament is highly conservative on reproductive rights. “Representatives should take on social demands, but this is not happening in Ecuador,” Chiriboga says.

“We know that courts can either expand rights or be regressive, as in the US, and we know that judges don’t have a deadline to study our case. But this court took only one year to rule on the exception for rape cases thanks to our advocacy and strong media pressure, and that’s what we are doing now with Justa Libertad.” she says. “We’re doing this for ourselves, for all of us. Our bodies and our rights have always been in dispute.”

Taking on the threat of the far-right

Brazilian feminists are also fighting to secure reproductive rights via judicial means. In September 2023, the president of the supreme court, Rosa Weber, opened a vote on decriminalising abortion up to 12
weeks, arguing that the abortion ban in the penal code is unconstitutional. The judges have not yet made a pronouncement.

The country’s penal code currently establishes penalties of one to three years in prison for people who have abortions. There are three exceptions: if there is risk to the patient’s life, if the pregnancy is a result of rape and if the foetus is anencephalic, a condition that affects the development of the skull and brain. 

Brazil is still reeling from the presidency of far-right Jair Bolsonaro from 2019-2022, and despite the election
of the left’s Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva in 2022, Bolsonaro’s party, the PL, is still the largest in the chamber of deputies. Earlier this year, PL deputies tried to push through a law that would have equated abortion and homicide. 

“We hope to follow Colombia,” says Tatianny Araujo from the campaign group, Network of Social Workers for the Right to Decide. “We cannot trust the parliament,
where there is a majority of white, heterosexual, right and extreme-right male deputies”.

For his part, Lula hasn’t been clear whether his government would endorse a national abortion access law or not, even though he has revoked a Bolsonaro-era regulation that restricted abortion for rape victims. 

“The far-right has a clear position, but the left parties don’t, because their politicians consider that giving their position on abortion could be used by the far-right against the government, as if that would end the debate,” Araujo says. “All the time we, women, are sold out.”

Araujo says feminist organisations will need to argue their case before the supreme court, but also have to work to change public opinion, lobby state representatives and take to the streets to make progress on reproductive rights – or at least to
fight not to lose what has been gained. 

While noting that those having clandestine abortions can’t wait any longer, she is confident that her country will eventually be swept by the green wave.  “We have to fight a long-term battle. It won’t be an easy path, and it might take time, but it is completely feasible.”

— Agustina Ordoqui is a freelance journalist based in Argentina who has contributed to Gloria Media’s Impact newsletter since February 2021.

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