Updating conservatism: Catholic Church reactions to sexual and reproductive policies in contemporary Argentina

KARINA FELITTI

Santa Bárbara, California

Simposio; International Symposium Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective; 2011

Universidad de California, Santa Bárbara

This paper analyses the relations between the Catholic Church and the State in contemporary Argentina. In particular, it studies the influences of religion at the moment of legislating and putting into practice laws and programs that guarantee sexual and reproductive rights. It also presents the communication strategies that some catholic groups develop in the media, social networks, Internet and public space, against current proposals to legalize abortion, and the ways they situated these actions in Argentinean recent history. Invoking the human rights of the unborn child, these NGOs relate their discourses to the current policies that promote the judgment of the crimes perpetrated by the last dictatorship and try to find in those battles their legitimacy. In sum, this paper analyses the role of religion in the political discussion about sexual and reproductive rights and the challenges that this religious public presence presents to the feminist movement and people that consider abortion as a women´s right.