In December 2020, first trimester abortion was legalized in Argentina with the passage of Law 27.610. This historic move presents an inflection point for Argentine democracy, as well as a case study in how rights concepts can be deployed effectively to advance reproductive justice. On September 14, 2021, the Petrie Flom Center held “Engendering Democracy: The Significance of Abortion Legalization in Argentina,” a panel discussion between key actors in the long struggle for legalization about the complicated and multi-staged narrative of how Argentina arrived at this point. Following the event, two of the panelists,Vilma Ibarra, Chief of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Presidency of Argentina, and Sandra Formia, Obstetrician/Gynecologist and former Provincial Coordinator, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Santa Fe Province (2017-2019), continued the conversation with the Record. Panel Moderator Alicia Ely Yamin (Senior Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School; Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Research Leader, Gender Sexuality and the Law Unit, UiB-CMI Centre on Law and Transformation) translated the discussion. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Mazelle Etessami: Thank you so much for speaking with me. As evidenced by the recent passage of the law and kind of the theme of the panel, there’s been a notable win and achievement for the movement. I’m trying to rewind the clock to the beginning and would love to hear from each of you independently about what compelled your initial involvement in this issue, on a personal level? There’s a wide variety of issues to pick from, so to speak, that one could get involved in and different levels to which one can get involved, but you’ve chosen reproductive justice as your cause and have dedicated your lives to it. So, I was wondering, on a personal level, what motivates your involvement in this issue?
Vilma Ibarra: I grew up in a household with three brothers, I was the only girl, and it was quite a traditional family with a very marked difference between the treatment of boys and girls. Even for my generation mine was a very traditional family with particularly conservative gender roles and that limited me in terms of what the expectations of what my life was going to be like including being prepared to be more than a housewife or work in a limited way. At the time in Argentine society, the gender differentials also limited my professional opportunities. I wanted to work in the judiciary, actually in criminal justice, and the kinds of roles I was allowed to take on were very limited and people constantly said ‘no, that’s not for women’.
So I guess this passion began as sort of a visceral understanding from my personal experience growing up, as well as seeing how my mother’s opportunities in life had been limited. She had wanted to be a doctor, but she was a housewife and dedicated herself to childcare and the household. And, as an adult, that grew into a broader sensitivity to the injustices and inequalities that women faced in society. Eventually, I became a political activist and developed a much deeper conceptual understanding of structural inequality, not just discrimination against women, but also against other subordinated and excluded groups, […] people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. Those kinds of structural inequalities and fissures across Argentine society were what I wanted to combat. From very early on in 2006, I presented the first bill to decriminalize abortion in Argentina; I presented legislation on same sex marriage when I was in the legislature. So, I think it really stems from a visceral feeling of constraint on life plans, my own and my mother’s and my family members’, to a more broader more articulated feeling about a society needing to combat structural inequalities.
I have held a lot of legal positions – a congressional representative, a senator, an assembly woman, now the Office of Legal Counsel for the Presidency—and in each of those positions of public service I have felt a constant obligation to use my position to work toward greater social and gender equality.
Mazelle Etessami: You are at this point of success now, but in times when things didn’t look as hopeful or were frankly more bleak, or when you were hitting wall after wall…What did you think of, or what got you through it? How did you kind of reorient yourself to reach the position that you are now? I’m particularly thinking of the people who will be reading this are students at the law school, who confront many challenges. And if there’s any advice that you have for overcoming, whether it’s small day to day challenges or larger, kind of more systemic challenges, when advocating for and championing such large change.
Vilma Ibarra: Rights are never really conquered. You need to continually conquer them every day. There are setbacks and there are wins, but it is an ongoing struggle. We always must be on the alert. Because even when you think that there’s, that you’re in a place where human rights have been fully conquered, a government can move in autocratic ways in other areas, and then clamp down and discriminate against populations that are vulnerable or rights that are perceived as more marginal. So, rights require constant defense and vigilance, and a struggle for the cultural internalization of rights, the consolidation of a cultural understanding of what these rights mean that makes them withstand attacks.
We have to be particularly aware of conservative autocratic forces, because those forces are always against women’s rights. Conservative counter attacks are always pushing women to be viewed in essentialist ways, having women’s place be in the home as mothers and child-rearers is always part of that reactionary package. So we have to be aware and attentive and also politically organized and ready to combat that because gender equality and women’s sexual and reproductive rights women’s rights will always be vulnerable otherwise.
In that regard, I want to highlight the importance of mass mobilization to the streets, whether it’s against gender-based violence and femicide or whether it’s for abortion and sexual and reproductive autonomy and reproductive justice. The importance of the official institutions, but mobilizing in the streets is also critically important. And it will always be necessary to mobilize to defend these conquests even though we now have the law.
What sustains me is really this notion of a ‘sorority’ (sororidad), sisterhood, solidarity of knowing that you’re working together with others in this struggle.
Mazelle Etessami: Turning to Sandra, there are a whole number of issues or health concerns that you could focus on or give your voice to as a healthcare professional. What is it about reproductive justice or right to abortions that stuck out to you or called you in a way on a personal level to become active and such a leader in the movement from a medical perspective?
Sandra Formia: As with Vilma my commitment started with my own personal history and even the ‘pre-history’ if you will, that I was born into in regards to gender inequalities where I grew up.
A key event in my life was having my son at the age of 22 when I was at university. It was a very happy event for me, but I knew it could be a tragedy for other women, cutting short their life plans. When I started my medical residency, it was still extremely patriarchal and it was much harder for me to pursue different medical paths than for any man.
I agree with Vilma that it’s a struggle about women’s reproductive autonomy. But at bottom, it’s really a struggle about constructing a world that is fair and just for everybody, not just men.
Alicia Yamin: May I interject here to say something that seems important, and Sandra can chime in or correct me? One thing that did come across but maybe not quite fully during the event is the National Campaign (for Safe, Free and Legal Abortion) continually absorbed many different actors over time, from labor unions to human rights groups to groups of providers. And besides the construction of legal standards, and political advocacy, this is also a story about building bridges and trust between lawyers and health providers, and efforts to build more equal and horizontal and trusting relationships between health providers in the formal health system and the Socorristas who were operating telephone hotlines and working to get women misoprostol pills outside of the system. I think that’s an important story for us to recall now in light of the Texas case. Sometimes as lawyers, we can tend to be narrowly focused on the courts in our understanding of rights struggles. However, a lot of other things are going on right now, and always have been because legal rights have not equaled effective access for all women, and disproportionately women of color . For example, progressive groups have long been working to help women abortion pills and obtain funding and care when that access is limited in practice, and of course mobilizing socially and politically on different fronts. That is not in any way to diminish the need to challenge the constitutionality of this alarming legislation. But these other domains of contestation are also very important– and they were critical in Argentina when legal opportunity structures were closed.
Sandra Formia: Yes, especially in the Texas situation because I was thinking about how to solve that problem from the health system when you have such a barrier from the law. The drugs and the regulation of drugs and the availability of mifepristone and misoprostol were absolutely critical, so that women weren’t just reliant on abortion in hospitals when the law was so limiting, but also could also use these networks of hotlines (Socorristas) to provide information and also get access to medical abortions–although some medical abortions were done in the health system as well. And in the United States, of course, you have self-standing abortion clinics that are not in the public health system… like this is the issue in Texas, right? In Argentina that is not the case so it’s a very different scenario for women and health professionals to deal with in the health system.
Mazelle Etessami: Thank you so so much, again, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the incredible work that you do throughout your career, because it’s been remarkable to hear about everything that you’ve accomplished thus far. And I think, as we’ve established, the US has a lot to learn.
To Learn more about the event and abortion legislation in Argentina, look up @PetrieFlom using #GreenWaveArgentina on Twitter.