What’s going on?

The constitutional right to abortion in the United States is currently under attack by the Trump administration. With the confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh (a man who has stated that the right to abortion is “not settled,” in addition to being the suspect of multiple allegations of sexual assault), there is a greater chance that right-wing politicians can push their agenda against abortion rights.1,2 It is a scary time, but also an important time to imagine new and better laws, and if necessary, how to go around state laws to make sure all people with pussies* have equal access to abortion and high quality reproductive healthcare.

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the Roe v. Wade case that the right to abortion is part of the fundamental right to privacy. The judges said that the choice about whether or not to have a baby belongs to the person who is pregnant, since it is their body and life that will be most affected.3 The argument comes from a liberal tradition of political thought that considers the body to be the most private property of the individual. This sounds like a strong argument to protect reproductive rights, but actually it fails to account for the inequalities that people face. In 1976, just three years later, the Court passed the Hyde Amendment, which says that no money from the federal government can be used to cover the cost of abortion. This means that people have to pay for it themselves. It also means that there is no guarantee of how many clinics there are in each state. Getting a safe abortion might be really hard, or even impossible for a person without money or who lives far away from a clinic. So, in many places the right to abortion (based on the right to privacy) is practically inaccessible for people who do not have money, which often overlaps with other forms of exclusion, like: race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, immigration status, and where a person lives.4

In most countries in Latin America (except for a few),5 abortion is considered a crime in state law and can be punished with jail time and fines. The Catholic Church has a lot of political power, and usually defines abortion as a sin (although there are important progressive Catholic movements that think otherwise).6 Latin American feminist movements for abortion rights have come up with very creative strategies for decreasing the harm done by these laws. In contrast to the United States, arguments for the right to abortion are based on the social right to health and gender equality (rather than the individual right to privacy). Most Latin American constitutions protect the universal right to health, which means all citizens are legally entitled to high quality healthcare and the government is responsible for providing it. Connecting the right to abortion to the human right to health could help Latin American movements for reproductive rights avoid the pitfalls of what is happening in the United States. The right to abortion based on the right to health might have more social justice potential than the right to privacy.

For example, in the aftermath of the Zika epidemic in Brazil, feminist lawyers made a case to the Supreme Court that demands the right to abortion for people diagnosed with Zika during pregnancy, along with other rights that would support the people who are most affected by the Zika virus (like public transportation to health centers, access to contraceptives, and healthcare for babies born with the neurological syndrome that comes from Zika).7

In 2007, Mexico City legalized abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and provides abortion free-of-cost in special clinics and hospitals. So even though abortion is considered a crime in federal law (and in the laws of other Mexican states), has been integrated to the public healthcare system in Mexico City.8 The fact that Mexico City makes abortion a free-of-cost healthcare service for any person who needs it is something we should aspire to in other places. At the same time, new kinds of inequalities are created when abortion is legal only in one city, and not anywhere else in the country.9 If Roe v. Wade is overturned in the United States, a similar kind of extreme geographic inequality might happen between states. For example, abortion might be legal in New Orleans, but be criminalized and inaccessible in the neighboring states of Georgia and Alabama.7

What can we do?

If we keep thinking of reproductive rights as only an individual private right, we will not be able to change the larger problems of inequality in our society. Advocates of reproductive rights have to be careful and savvy to not repeat the same words and concepts that conservative factions in governments use about individual choice.  We should still demand the right to make decisions about our own bodies and reproductive lives, but at the same time we have make demands for the right to health for all. In the United States, we could look to Latin America for examples of how to create institutional structures (like public health clinics and feminist advocacy) so that every person who ends up considering an abortion has all the information and all the possibilities for accessing a safe procedure. We could shift our activist language and vision from reproductive rights to reproductive justice, and connect the right to abortion to other kinds of political and social claims to healthcare access, gender equality and race reparations.9

Feminist movements in the “North” and in the “South” have to keep sharing strategies. We need Abortion Funds and feminist networks because they are vital to make sure that state laws and partisan politics are not the only thing that determine whether people with pussies* have rights.10 In places with restrictive laws, misoprostol (a pill that can be used either alone or with another medication called mifeprostone to cause an abortion) has become a powerful tool to help people safely terminate pregnancy.10 We need to keep organizing in our local communities to provide the correct information about how to use misoprostol and where to get it for a fair price. We need to think collectively about the best way to distribute this new pharmaceutical technology and make sure that it puts power into the hands of the people who are most vulnerable to criminalization and who are looking for a safe way to end their pregnancy.

Author's Dedication: Dedicated to all the people who share quality information, give care and actively support equal abortion access in contexts of criminalization and stigma.

ANNEX by Maria Scheibengraf of Crisol Translation Services

In the case of Argentina, 2018 was a key year in the fight for the decriminalization of abortion. In March, the National Campaign for the Right to Legal, Safe and Free Abortion presented, for the seventh time in 13 years, a bill to expand abortion rights to allow people with pussies* to terminate their pregnancies in the first 14 weeks.13 The bill narrowly passed through the lower house of Congress but the Senate, more conservative, rejected it in August 2018. The struggle continues with the argument that legal, safe and free abortion is a right to health that concerns gender equality and social justice. For now, under the battle cry "Sexual education to decide, birth control to not abort, legal abortion to not die," activists are still trying to get the law passed. Meanwhile, they are also pushing for the law on Comprehensive Sexual Education—sanctioned in 2006 but rarely adhered to—to be declared "of public order;" which would require all provinces to teach the curricular contents of the law in all educational institutions, private or public.