Family planning in 1960s Argentina: an original Latin American case?

KARINA FELITTI

Amherst

Conferencia; 15th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, “Generations: Exploring Race, Sexuality, and Labor across Time and Space"; 2011

University of Massachusetts

Throughout the 1960s, the population growth in the so called Third World became a crucial issue in the political agendas of international organizations. Some of them recommended, and ultimately imposed family planning programs onto various countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, in contrast to most Latin American countries, Argentina´s birth rate was low to the point of not justifying intromissions as regards its demographic policies. Moreover, at the local level myriad groups circulated discourses and attempted to delineate policies geared towards increasing the birth rate. This paper will show that the opposition to family planning during the sixties was made of a heterogeneous assembling that cut across the ideological and political spectrum. Certainly, by using different arguments and drawing on diverging discourses, the Catholic Church, leftwing intellectuals, and guerrilla groups all opposed family planning. At the same time, a small but well known group of doctors publicly advocated for the enhancement of family planning programs, which they thought represented a solution to the health problems caused by the extended practices of illegal abortions. Equally important, in the intersection of the 1960s and 1970s the emerging feminist movement endorsed family planning in the frame of their struggles for women´s sexual and reproductive rights. In many ways, the power relations within the field of debate and enactment of family planning programs in Argentina helped configure the distinctiveness of the country´s experience vis a vis Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico.