Movement Strategies and Interactions with the Law in a Restrictive and Legal Framework: Political Mobilization, Rights Strategies and Direct Action within the Abortion Rights Movement in Argentina

ALBA RUIBAL; CORA FERNÁNDEZ-ANDERSON

Congreso; Law and Society Association Meeting; 2017

Law and Society Association

How do different movement sectors relate to the law and legal change in a restrictive and resilient-to-change legal framework? This paper addresses the question through the study of the current strategies of the abortion rights movement in Argentina. The abortion law in this country dates back to 1921, and allows abortion only when the life or health of the woman is at risk and in cases of rape. Since that date the law has not been modified and even access to those legal abortions has been virtually non-existent. A movement for abortion reform has been present since the 1983 democratization process but has in the last 10 years grown in strength through the development of three clear strategies each of which questions and relates to the current law in a different way. In the first place, in 2005 women?s organizations launched a National Campaign for Free, Safe and Legal Abortion which introduced in Congress a bill to make abortion legal in the first trimester based on women?s decision. Second, feminist lawyers and public health professionals have developed a legal and public health strategy oriented to the enactment of a normative framework for the implementation of lawful abortion services in public hospitals. In addition, they have been involved in training judges in reproductive rights to create the grounds for legal activism and future changes to the law through the Judiciary. Finally, other women?s organizations and the Network of doctors and medical personnel for the right to choose have focused on a direct-action strategy that has increased access to abortion without changes to the current legal framework. This involves both the provision of abortions based on the assumption that all unwanted pregnancies are a threat to women?s psychological health, and the increase of access to information about self-induced abortion through hotlines and websites. How does each of these strategies address the current legal framework and the need for legal reform? In situations when legislative reform is resisted, social movements, while maintaining their demand for legal reform, might also develop parallel strategies to expand access to rights within the current legal framework. Drawing on original field research carried out between 2007 and 2016, this paper explores how the abortion rights movement in Argentina creatively seeks to change the restrictive normative framework through variation in enforcement, regulation and interpretation of the existing abortion law, while at the same time pushing for congressional action, in times when legal reform is being blocked in Congress.