Following a monthslong, contentious debate, the Argentine Senate rejected a bill in the early hours of Thursday morning to expand abortion rights. It was a setback for feminists.
One could marvel at the political resilience of Argentina’s conservatives, but I prefer to admire how close feminists came to achieving success.
This was the first time, after many tries, that abortion-rights activists succeeded in getting Congress to consider a bill. They even won support for the bill in the lower chamber. In the process, they mobilized some of the largest street demonstrations ever in the country in favor of a cause that only a decade ago was taboo.
How did Argentine feminists get this far? In many ways, by incorporating lessons from their less-visible partners: L.G.B.T. activists.
When Argentina approved same-sex marriage in 2010, the country instantly became a world champion of L.G.B.T. rights. Argentina was the first country in Latin America to adopt such a law. A slew of impressive L.G.B.T. laws followed in parenting, gender parity and transgender rights.
But with this progress, Argentina also became the focus of more attention for its regressive laws restricting abortion. Why had there been no similar progress on abortion rights?
Abortion in Argentina remains restricted to cases of rape or medical threats to a woman’s life. The abortion-rights cause in Argentina is up against the same forces that were blocking L.G.B.T. rights in the 2000s: religion, conservatism, patriarchy and misogyny.
Some people argue that the battle for abortion rights is harder than the one for same-sex marriage. There is some truth to this.
Anti-abortion advocates have succeeded in casting the abortion-rights side as intent on “killing innocent lives,” which of course sounds abominable. They have effectively called abortion restrictions necessary to save the life of the fetus and the life of the mother. It is difficult to fight this framing.
But the problem for the abortion-rights movement has had to do with strategy beyond framing the debate. Up until a few years ago, feminists lacked strategies to address divisions within their constituency and to reach out to outside groups.
L.G.B.T. activists in Argentina overcame similar challenges in the 2000s. Back then, initially, the idea of same-sex marriage divided an already fragmented L.G.B.T. community, with some people preferring to prioritize narrow policy-oriented challenges — such as labor discrimination, hate crimes and health services — while others saw marriage itself as too establishment.
But the decision to prioritize same-sex marriage ended up unifying the movement. L.G.B.T. activists realized that it was an issue that would bring people together behind a bigger cause: equal protection before the law. Once L.G.B.T. leaders framed the issue as one of equality, internal divisions within the movement lessened. More unity gave way to more political force.
Feminist leaders in the past few years finally started to address divisions among women. As the political scientist Mala Htun has explained, in Latin America, women’s views of abortion have two components: attitudinal and class.
The attitudinal component is that there are anti-abortion women on the left, which has meant that forming a strong abortion-rights coalition has been more complicated than simply corralling the left.
The class component is that wealthier women have the option and means to get safe abortions underground or abroad. For them, the abortion ban doesn’t matter. They can publicly appear anti-abortion but privately know that abortion is available to them.
Argentine feminists did impressive work to bridge these ideological and class divides. They canvassed poor neighborhoods to make less-affluent women feel empowered to demand change. And they carried out campaigns to encourage seemingly conservative middle-class women to recognize the double standard of publicly appearing anti-abortion while privately acting pro-choice. They encouraged them to reveal that they too would have underground abortions if needed; they convinced many women that it’s unfair for them to have that option and deny it to poor women.
Just as L.G.B.T. groups succeeded in framing same-sex marriage as an issue of equality before the law, women’s movements succeeded in framing abortion as an issue of equality, but this time across classes. This lessened divisions among women.
Feminists in Argentina also learned from L.G.B.T. groups the importance of outreach to conservative groups. Selecting marriage equality as a priority forced L.G.B.T. groups to make arguments that appealed to conservative ears. The desire to have a stable and monogamous union under the rule of law appeals to patriarchs and neoliberals alike.
Feminists also began to talk more about how criminalization of abortion, rather than suppress demand, only encourages underground abortions. They emphasized that underground abortions increase medical complications and thus hospitalizations, which is costly for the state. They adopted the slogan “Legal abortion prevents deaths,” which cleverly turns the abortion-rights position into a pro-life stand.
Women’s movements did more than just learn from allies. They have a long history of innovation. Their highly original acts of public shaming during the dictatorship (1976 to 1983) helped bring down the junta. Their successful lobbying under democratic rule yielded in 1991 the first ever quota law in Latin America, which forced parties to increase female representation in Congress. And in 2015, they started a highly effective campaign against gender violence (#NiUnaMenos), which mobilized young people of all sexual orientations. These innovations obviously paved the way for their progress today.
It is also true that progress is more than just the result of strategy. It also depends on structural factors. Despite national pride over Pope Francis, who is Argentine, the Catholic Church in Argentina continues to decline in terms of members and reputation. And both President Trump and the #MeToo movement have galvanized feminist movements worldwide, including in Argentina. Domestic and international opportunities have never been more favorable.
But opportunity alone does not bring about change. Opportunity needs to be seized.
Despite the outcome in the Senate, the women’s movement in Argentina has made great progress. This is a testament to its own efforts — which includes the open exchange of ideas between the movement and its L.G.B.T. allies.
Javier Corrales, a professor of political science at Amherst College, is the author, most recently, of Fixing Democracy: Why Constitutional Change Often Fails to Enhance Democracy in Latin America.