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Painting History Green
In 2018, for the first time in Argentine history, a project for the legalization of voluntary abortion was debated in Congress. On the evening of August 8, I left my job and headed towards the Plaza del Congreso. The rain was torrential and the cold of the Argentine winter was sharp, yet thousands of women waited on the Plaza del Congreso in those conditions. The Senate was discussing the law proposing voluntary interruption of pregnancy. On one side of the park, supporters of the pro-life movement wore blue scarves and waved the Argentine flag, chanting "Save both lives." On the other were those who dreamed of a fairer Argentina, where motherhood was desired and not imposed — one where women, girls and adolescents could decide whether, how, and when to become mothers.
The Senate rejected the proposal. I was outside of Congress when this happened, waiting under the rain with thousands of other women wearing our green handkerchiefs. “Sexual education to decide, contraception to avoid abortions, abortion to not die,” we chanted for hours. This is one of the memories I am most fond of, even if the result was bittersweet.
On December 30, 2020, the Argentine Senate finally approved the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy Law. It was 3:00 a.m. Toronto time when the Senate voted: 38 votes in favor and 29 votes against. Legal abortion was finally a reality in Argentina. I cried and cheered from my sofa in Toronto, miles away from Buenos Aires, wishing that — for a minute — I could teleport to that park in Buenos Aires where thousands of women, once again, joined together to make their voices heard. I wished I could be there to hug my friends and celebrate after all these years of debating and campaigning for women’s rights.
The International Human Rights Program (IHRP) Working Group Panel: Impact & Implementation — Carrying Out Legalized Abortion Reform in Argentina, carried out on March 5 featured three experts in the field: Mariela Belski, Executive Director of Amnesty International Argentina, Giselle Carino, CEO of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF/WHR), and Mercedes Cavallo, Visiting Professor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) candidate at the University of Toronto. The three of them presented the different challenges posed by the implementation of the new Voluntary Interruption of Abortion Law. Among the most salient issues, they discussed structural barriers to accessing abortion such as lack of trained personnel, lack of available medications necessary to perform ambulatory abortions, and the reluctance of some provinces to regulate the procedure locally.
The law came into force on January 14. Any woman who decided to have an abortion before the 14th week of pregnancy could do so voluntarily (or even later, in some cases for which it would already have been legal). But this does not mean the fight is over. As the panelists pointed out, hundreds of private hospitals and healthcare institutions are already trying to declare themselves “conscious objector institutions” by asking their employees, individually, to take on these positions; “pro-life” groups are putting pressure on health professionals to stop them from performing the procedure. There are particularly serious concerns in rural areas where access to health centers is scarce and, where in some cases, services are provided by religious institutions holding conservative views. Argentina is a vast country and does not have sufficient medical infrastructure everywhere. Furthermore, constitutional challenges by pro-life groups are already flooding Argentine courts.
The work of women, such as Mariela, Giselle and Mercedes, the panelists, is fundamental to ensure that all the rights affirmed by the movement are accessible to all. Supporting local advocates and organizations, keeping track of existing data, and paying particular attention to vulnerable groups, such as migrants and Indigenous peoples, are some of the next steps civil society is taking to keep public and private institutions accountable when they fail to comply with their new legal obligations.
The “Green Wave” has been more than a fight for abortion rights. It has been a claim over the autonomy of women’s bodies; it encompasses decades of feminist claims and has grown so resonant that no one could ignore it. Schools, churches, mosques, synagogues and every Argentine’s dinner table was the forum for heated debates. The claims of Argentinian women claims were no longer silenced. They were loud and clear, so loud they are echoing all across Latin America and the world. The name of the “Green Wave” comes from the color of our scarves, the color of the Campaign to Legalize Abortion in Argentina. Others have coined it “The Revolution of the Daughters”, because it was mostly young women and teenage girls who revived the debate around abortion rights in Argentina.
Even though abortion is now officially legal in Argentina, access remains to be attained. In a country undergoing a deep economic crisis, marked by inequality and high poverty levels, access to abortion rights presents not only a challenge, but also a new mission for the Green Wave.
"Recuerden las mujeres que dispersas las fuerzas se debilitan y que para conseguir el bien común necesario es sacudir la apatía y eleverse por encima de bienestar del momento presente."
"Remember women that dispersed forces are weakened and that to achieve the common good, necessary is to shake off apathy and rise above the well-being of the present moment." (English Translation)
Alicia Moreau de Justo, an Argentine feminist (1885-1986)
Ashley Mochon is an Argentine lawyer specialized in Public International Law, graduated from the University of Buenos Aires. She is a candidate for the LLM (Master of Laws) at the University of Toronto, Concentration in Health Law, Ethics and Policy and the Collaborative Program in Women and Gender Studies.